One of the owners of a wedding-planning business in Tenerfie that closed suddenly last month has said there is no point in couples who paid the company tens of thousands of euro chasing their money because it has nothing left to give. Lars Jensen, who ran Weddings In Tenerife with his wife, Claire Lopez, told the locally produced Tenerife Pod that about 40 couples had been affected by the firm applying for insolvency. He suggested tens of thousands of euro had been refunded through chargeback processes operated by banks and credit card providers. Sorcha McManigan, from Dublin, who with her fiance, Alan Kent, paid the company €26,000 for a wedding due to take place in September, said she had got nothing back. She said she was “devastated” after hearing Jensen’s interview.“They have completely left us in the dark and the only information we find out is from some podcast,” she told The Irish Times. The couple paid Weddings In Tenrife €26,000 for their wedding but discovered the money was gone with virtually none of the vendors paid. Sorcha McManigan from Dublin and her fiance Alan Kent Since telling her story last week, McManigan has been contacted by about 35 other couples with similar experiences, including five from Ireland, she said. Some of these couples had been planning to get married as soon as next weekend, while others had paid deposits for weddings that were not scheduled to happen until 2028, she said.McManigan said she had made a statement to An Garda Síochána about the loss of her wedding budget and was investigating other potential legal avenues. The couple started planning their wedding in autumn 2024 and paid more than two-thirds of what they believed would be the final bill. However, they received an email from the Weddings In Tenerife business address on May 22nd saying the business intended to file for insolvency. The email said the business was “no longer allowed to perform any activities regarding weddings in Tenerife which means we will not be able to deliver any products or services for your project”.McManigan said 80 guests invited to her wedding had booked flights and paid for accommodation, which left her less than four months to arrange a wedding that they did not know how they would afford.On the podcast, Jensen said the company had cash-flow issues. “We didn’t have any money left and therefore we had to declare insolvency.” He said he and Lopez had tried to find outside investors but “a lot of these people who said that they were interested were not able to produce the money”. Jensen said he and Lopez had lost a substantial amount of money and “lost our company and we’ve lost our reputation”. He said there was “no point me having face-to-face conversations with angry clients”, but he hoped impacted couples “will find their peace with this and they don’t keep chasing this like it was a crime”.He told the podcast the company “went bust and we are very sorry that this happened”. “If they don’t believe that we did everything we could to avoid it there’s nothing I can do about that, but I really hope that they will find a way to move on, you know, because if they keep chasing this like it’s a crime, and we need Interpol involved and they need to be investigated and stuff like that, they’re wasting their own time because this is insolvency.”