resolution achieved

so i called the resort. after telling him how i think his contract is a piece of crap (not in those exact words), two things were realized:

1) it's not about the amount of people but the dollar amount. we had signed the original contract with a guarantee that we would spend X amount of dollars. we're dumb for not realizing that (but the contract isn't very clear about it), but had someone pointed it out to us, we wouldn't have guaranteed for 129 people. and that had we been pressed to give a guarantee, we would have said 100 anyway.

2) this guy gets his commission off of the guaranteed amount. that's when it all clicked for me.

so we're keeping the guaranteed amount of money for 100 people, but since we're only having 75, he's throwing an extra hour of open bar for us. so it'll all balances out.

and now you can carry on with your regularly scheduled wedding.

oh, and i managed not to say anything that would regret later.