Catering deposits: what's normal, what's refundable, what's not

Nobody plans a wedding around its deposit clauses, and then a date moves, a venue falls through, or life happens, and suddenly the deposit paragraph is the most read text in the whole contract. Here is how catering deposits actually work in Portugal: the market norms, the legal default underneath them, and the timing tiers that decide whether money comes back.

What a normal catering deposit looks like

Portuguese market practice is consistent across serious operators:

• 20 to 30% of the estimated total to secure the date. On a €10,000 wedding catering bill, that is €2,000 to €3,000.
• A mid payment, often another 30 to 40%, somewhere between confirmation and the final month.
• The balance at the final headcount, 10 to 14 days before the event, when the number of guests locks and the total becomes exact.

Anything inside those bands is unremarkable. Deposits of 50% or more up front, full prepayment months out, or "flexible" schedules that never get written down are all departures from the norm, and departures deserve questions.

What a deposit legally is in Portugal: the sinal

This is the part almost no couple knows, and it is worth two minutes. Portuguese civil law has a specific concept called the sinal, the earnest-money deposit. Under the default rule, if the party who paid the sinal walks away, they forfeit it; if the party who received it walks away, they must return it in double. That symmetry is the law's starting point unless the contract says otherwise.

Two practical consequences, stated carefully and not as legal advice:

1. A deposit is not automatically refundable. If you cancel, the legal default favours the vendor keeping the sinal. Refundability exists only where the contract grants it, which is why the contract itself matters more than any verbal reassurance.
2. A vendor who cancels owes you more than a refund. The double-return default exists precisely because a vendor abandoning your date causes real damage. Contracts sometimes write this down explicitly, sometimes quietly replace it; reading which one yours does is worth the ten minutes.

Any specific situation deserves a Portuguese lawyer, not a blog post. But knowing the default exists changes how you read every deposit clause put in front of you.

Refundability tiers: what timing usually means

Market practice, independent of the legal default, tends to tier like this:

The pattern's logic is simple: the closer to the date, the more of the caterer's real costs and lost opportunities your booking has consumed. A fair contract writes these tiers down; a poor one leaves them to argument.

Postponement is not cancellation

The most useful thing a couple in trouble can know: moving the date is a different conversation from cancelling. Vendors would almost always rather keep the booking on a new date than fight over a deposit, and market practice is to roll deposits to the new date, sometimes with a change fee, sometimes with peak-to-peak restrictions (a June Saturday moves to another June Saturday, not to a February Tuesday, without price discussion). If circumstances are shifting, open the postponement conversation early; the options shrink every week.

Deposit red flags

• Payment to a personal account. A company should invoice from a company account, with VAT. No exceptions worth your money.
• No contract, just a transfer. A deposit without a signed document referencing it is a donation with hope attached.
• More than 50% up front, far from the date. Outside festive-season exceptions, oversized early deposits signal cash-flow problems, and a caterer's cash-flow problem has a way of becoming your wedding's problem.
• Refund promises that exist only verbally. If it is refundable, it is refundable in writing. Ask for the sentence.

How we handle it, stated plainly

Our proposals state the exact deposit, schedule and terms in writing before any money moves, and we would tell every couple to accept nothing less from anyone, including us. The deposit conversation is also a preview of the relationship: a caterer who is precise and unbothered when discussing money tends to run precise and unbothered kitchens. The ones who get vague at the first invoice rarely get sharper by the wedding day. Alongside the questions you ask before booking, let the deposit paperwork cast its vote.