Your wedding day is often one of the largest expenditures you will make, short of purchasing a home. You would not consider spending as much money on a car or a home without insuring it. Why will you spend that much money on a single day and not insure yourself?
What will you do if your venue has a catastrophic fire just a week or two prior to your big day?
What happens if your wedding cake arrives and is not at all what you ordered?
Who pays the bills if one of your guests trips over the DJs cables to the speakers? Who pays for the shattered speakers or the guests shattered ankle?
Do you have any protection if your guests get food poisoning?
Your destination wedding is cancelled due to a hurricane? Who is going to cover that costs as well as the cost of doing another wedding?
One of your vendors goes out of business and files bankruptcy, keeping your deposit and unable to fulfill their contract. Who pays to hire another vendor?
Where do you go to these situations covered? Is there such a thing as wedding insurance?
For a one-time premium you can be covered for these situations. Often the premium is a percentage of your overall budget. Usually the insurance does not have a deductible.
Wedding insurance can protect you from a lot of different situations. The following are some of the situations covered by wedding day insurance:
Clothing—lost or damaged is covered. Repairs or replacement of the clothing is covered. If the clothing shop goes out of business prior to delivering your dress or tux, you will be able to recover your deposits.
Venues—ceremony and/or reception site goes out of business or is destroyed by natural disaster. Deposits and all fees paid so far are covered. Some venues require couples to provide coverage in the event their guests damage the venue.
Severe Weather—hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods are all weather situations that can impact a wedding day. Non-recoverable costs can be covered if you have to postpone your wedding due to any of these circumstances.
Liquor—some policies include coverage to protect you against lawsuits arising from alcohol related issues.
Catering-food poisoning is not something anyone wants to think of on their wedding day. However, if your guests end up sick, you want to be sure their medical expenses are covered. If your caterer does not show up you want to be able to quickly provide suitable food and that added expense can be covered.
Military call up—if one member of the couple is called to active duty or has their leave cancelled and it impacts your wedding, the costs associated with moving the wedding day can be covered.
Any one of these situations can result in unexpected expenses totaling thousands of dollars!
We actually had a situation arise for one of our couples recently. They had spent months planning a beautiful destination wedding. The wedding had been planned with a local planner at the destination, including steel drummers, decorations, cake, officiant, ceremony written and approved, dress purchased, tickets purchased for all the required travel. They were on a cruise with their best friends and part of their family. The remainder of the family was going to met them at one of the ports of call. When the ship left one port to head to the wedding destination, the captain announced that due to the path of the hurricane they would not be going to that particular island. Their itinerary was changed! The family who was to meet them at the port was in transit and could not be reached. What were they to do? What were their options?
We have also worked with couples whose venue was destroyed by weather related disasters. They lost a lot of money on deposits that may or may not have been recovered from the various vendors. They had to change locations, often entire cities away, find new vendors because some of their vendors also lost equipment and supplies in the disaster. Those who had insurance were much more relaxed about all that they were facing because they knew that large portions of the loss was covered by their insurance.
Other situations we have seen couples deal with include a venue closing abruptly with no back up plan for couples currently booked and no money to be returned to them. We havce also seen dress shops going out of business and brides unable to get the dress they ordered. As well a sudden illness of the bride which meant major changes to their plans. While having insurance did not remove all the stress and extra work, it did help with some of the financial stress.
We all hope that none of these things happen on your wedding day. The reality is that we must plan for those things that are outside of our control. And Wedding Insurance allows you to do just that!
We have other ideas and ways to remove stress from your wedding planning and your wedding day. Talk to us about how we can work together! 336-937-0890 or email us at Liz@TriadWeddingOfficiant.com
