Horrible experience!

After a great dinner experience my fiancé and I booked Oude Wellington to do the catering at our wedding in May 2020. We were treated to a demo at the restaurant and we confirmed that we will be booking them to do the catering. Soon after we received an invoice that required a deposit of R5000 to secure the date and we immediately made payment. Soon after the venue we booked for our wedding went bang and we were forced to book another venue. Unfortunately the only venue we could get that was still available, could accommodate the size of our wedding and was relatively within our budget was a venue that does not allow any outsourced catering in their kitchen. They have an in-house caterer and although we tried to negotiate, they maintained that it is the terms of their venue. Considering it was still another 9 months to our wedding date, I wrote the owner of Oude Wellington, Susan, a very friendly email explaining the situation. We further explained that we, as a young couple, are mostly paying for our wedding ourselves and would really appreciate it if we could get the deposit back, seeing as we only received an invoice with no cancellation terms or conditions. We also insisted that we would like to pay for the demo and all other expenses they might have gone on already. She never rep****, so we contacted her telephonically. She then rep**** with a very stern email, stating that she is now losing business and wants to know who is going to make up for the business that they now loose on the 30th of May 2020. Once again we apologised for the inconvenient situation and kindly explained the situation and again stated that there is still nine months left until the wedding date and that we are willing to pay for any expenses that they have had on our account. Susan is yet to reply after numerous emails sent to her over the last couple of weeks. She also does not respond to our WhatsApp messages, etc. The fact of the matter is Oude Wellington has R5000 of our savings and will not be delivering a service in return. They ignore our messages and thereby simply refuse to return our deposit, even though there is more that enough time until May 2020 for new business. They also did not present us with a contract stating non refundable deposits of any sort. We are very disappointed with Oude Wellington and can not understand how any reputable business can take someone's money, knowing that they won't be delivering any service in return. We even know Susan on a personal level, which makes this whole experience horrible. It hurts me to write this review.