The case law from that period is the best free education in clause drafting the wedding industry has ever gotten. Here's what it taught.
What force majeure actually is (and the trap courts warn about)
A force majeure clause relieves a party of liability when performance becomes impossible due to an extreme, unforeseeable event beyond their control. New York courts put the standard precisely: an event must be "an extreme and unforeseeable occurrence" that was "beyond [the party's] control and without its fault or negligence."
Then the trap. When a clause lists specific events (war, flood, fire) plus a catch-all phrase, courts apply ejusdem generis — the general words get read to cover only the same kind of events as the specific ones listed. New York's Nelkin v. Wedding Barn at Lakota's Farm (2020) walks through the doctrine citing Kel Kim Corp. v. Central MKts.: a catch-all doesn't become whatever the party wants it to mean when the crisis arrives.
The drafting lesson: if you want pandemics and government orders covered, name them. Generic "acts of God" language is a lottery ticket, not a plan. The Brooklyn Law School analysis of COVID-era event contracts reached the same conclusion after surveying the first wave of rulings: drafters should specify that a pandemic is a force majeure event — while noting the obvious wrinkle that COVID itself, now known, may no longer qualify as "unforeseeable." Future pandemics with names would. Government shutdowns and capacity orders can be named without that problem.
The two COVID rulings every vendor should know
The venue that kept the booking fee — Nelkin v. Wedding Barn at Lakota's Farm (NY, 2020). New York's executive orders barred the kind of gathering planned; the couple invoked force majeure and won the right to cancel. But the damages fight went the venue's way on one detail: the contract's force majeure promised a refund of "all refundable deposits" — and the booking fee was, by its own separate clause, non-refundable. The court returned everything except the $3,875 booking fee and added statutory interest.
Read the interaction carefully, because this is where most contracts have a seam: your force majeure clause and your retainer clause are read together. If the retainer clause says "non-refundable" and the force majeure clause says "refundable deposits come back," the non-refundable language wins, pandemic or not. The venue didn't get lucky. The contract said so, twice, in different paragraphs.
The venue that had to refund — Sanders v. Edison Ballroom (NY, 2021). Different boilerplate, opposite result, and a detail worth keeping straight: the event was a bat mitzvah, not a wedding, but the clause logic is identical. This contract's force majeure covered performance becoming "illegal or impossible" because of "acts of a governmental authority," and it provided for refund on that trigger. Executive orders applied, performance was illegal, and the court awarded $10,048.73 — the amount the card issuer hadn't already refunded. Same pandemic, same state, opposite outcome from Nelkin: both couples got out of the contract; only one lost the booking fee. The drafting was the difference.
The couple who lost anyway — Appelt v. CPM Farms (BC, 2020). Canadian small-claims, but the reasoning travels: the couple cancelled voluntarily: the restrictions allowed their 82-guest wedding to proceed at reduced numbers, and the court found the pandemic wasn't actually what stopped the wedding. The force majeure clause "triggered" in the abstract, but the party invoking it had to show the event genuinely prevented performance for them. Force majeure is not a do-over button for cold feet, and a vendor who offers a free postponement (as this venue did) looks very good in front of a decision-maker.
The four things a post-COVID clause must name
Synthesizing the rulings and the 2026 checklists (MKTRL, photo-logica, The Knot's attorney list):
- Named events: government orders and capacity restrictions, pandemic/epidemic, venue closure or loss, extreme weather, travel bans. Specific lists defeat the ejusdem generis trap.
- What happens to money, where the Nelkin/Sanders fork lives. Say it in this clause, not just in the retainer clause: what's returned, what's retained, what converts to credit. MKTRL's fair-terms standard: force majeure structured as mutual release with full refund; a clause letting the studio walk and keep the deposit "is not acceptable" by 2026 market norms.
- Postponement first: the obligation to offer a new date before refund (Appelt shows vendors who offered this win; couples' guides like The Knot treat it as the expected baseline).
- Notice mechanics: a deadline (Nelkin's contract required written notice within 10 days of learning the trigger; the clause worked partly because the mechanics were real). Name how and when the force majeure claim gets raised.
The vendor-side problem nobody drafts for
Force majeure protects whoever's performance became impossible, including you. If you're the videographer whose lab burned down, or the photographer banned from travel, the clause is your exit. But the couple's guides now include a clause most vendor templates miss: what the couple is owed if YOUR force majeure hits and no substitute can be found. Full refund is the answer every consumer-facing checklist expects (Contractable's couple checklist; MKTRL's clause 16 — "full refund plus compensation" when the studio cancels).
This connects directly to the breach-side cases in the retainer article: at least one court — an unpublished Wisconsin decision, Serchen v. Diana Ornes Photography — ordered a "non-refundable" retainer returned when the photographer was the breaching party. One decision is not a doctrine, but the direction should worry a vendor who relies on the word "non-refundable" alone. Your force majeure clause and your substitute-photographer clause together are what keep that from happening to you — you didn't breach, performance was impossible, and the contract already said what happens next.
The short version
A force majeure clause is a contract between your 2020 self and your next crisis. COVID taught the industry what it pays out: named government orders, money terms stated in the clause itself, postponement offered first, notice deadlines real. Everything vaguer than that is a gamble on how your two clauses read together — Nelkin kept the booking fee only because a separate clause had already said it was non-refundable.
VowSign's wedding photography contract template already names weather, natural disasters, government action, epidemics and venue closure in its force majeure section, with pre-written refund terms — edit it to match your venue's rules and your state, and have a local attorney check the final language.