Your deposit has an expiration date on being yours. Nobody circles it for you.
It slides — fully refundable this month, half next month, gone after that — and the schedule lives in a paragraph most planners meet for the first time while trying to cancel.
The fix takes ten minutes: turn the refund tiers into real calendar dates the day you sign. Not 'sixty days before arrival' — the actual date, in your calendar, with an alarm a week early.
That alarm is the difference between a decision and a discovery. Groups that shrink, budgets that move, plans that wobble — all fine, if you're still on the right side of the date.
Planning information, not legal advice — the contract's wording rules.
You don't need a better contract. You need to know exactly when the clock runs out — while there's still time to act.
Based on The Retreat Register internal venue dataset as of August 4, 2026. How verification works: the methodology.