Sadly, this is a new fact of life with mid-sized venues. The "bridezilla" movement is behind it, with the seemingly unlimited amounts of money spent to create "our perfect wedding" driving prices up. I know this because I oversaw a medium-small venue. We were underpriced for the area, not quite understanding we were attracting all the folderol that came with weddings (roudy parties, hangers-on after the event was over, etc.) that in turn drove our costs up.
(Married for 30 years I didn't quite grok what a huge business weddings have become, until recently. It seems that local banks are now on TV promoting "wedding loans" for those insane tens-of-thousands it costs to stage the perfect storybook wedding with hundreds of guests. What happens if you default? They repossess the bride/groom? Take away the cake topper... and the refrigerator it's in?)
Fortunately we realized this before it got totally out of hand, and seeing that the "venue" part was not our primary business we shut it all down. A couple of other area venues suffered the same problem, and they weren't as fortunate to see the handwriting before it tanked their businesses.
Don't know this is the exact situation with the Jaffa, but I suspect it might be.
