Hey Ben,
Thank you for reaching out to us.
We are sorry to hear about the struggles you had while trying to customize the plugin.
I would love to help you with this topic.
Actually, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but we have built our plugin in a way that makes it easy to come up with template overrides.
You might want to read our Themer’s guide to get a sense of how that works.
Basically, provided you create a /tribe-events/ folder and the proper path for the modified file, the modified file will have priority over the plugin’s file.
That also means that your customization will survive plugin updates.
You are welcome back in our support forums any time 🙂
For now, I am going to close this thread.
Have a great week!
Geoff B.