Do YOU Really need Wedding Insurance?
As wedding vendors, Carole and I have insurance to help protect us against damages to people and to wedding venues in case something happens, like a guest stumbling over a tripod and breaking their leg.
But what about you, the couple getting married?
I see this question a lot on the various forums instead of talking shop today, I want to go into detail wedding insurance and answer the age old question; Do YOU really need wedding insurance?
Truthfully, you don’t need insurance, but as a vendor, I would HIGHLY recommend that you invest in it.
But, before I go into why that is, let’s first understand what it is and what it does to help protect you in the first place.
Insurance is Small compared to the Rest of the Wedding
Most wedding insurance is pretty much the same under the hood, it’s a liability policy that helps cover all sorts of things for your wedding day, mostly accidents from you, vendors and wedding guests too. Think medical costs and the like.
In addition, it helps protect you if a vendor fails to show up (it’s happened from time to time and I have an article about that here), it covers theft of wedding gifts, if you have to cancel the wedding because of bad weather, think a hurricane or bad snow storm, flooding and that sort of thing.
In some cases you can get coverage to help recoup your deposits on vendors too.
As a vendor, we have a general liability policy that helps protect us if someone steals our gear, an accident occurs or if something bad happens. It cost’s about $600 a year for all the weddings that we do.
For couples getting married, the cost is much less, about $200 or less depending on whom you choose.
Wedsure, one of the industry leading wedding insurance carriers has basic coverage for about $125+ and the cost is well worth it.
Think of it this way, if you’re spending say $20,000 on your wedding day, is $200 worth the cost to make sure that ll the vendors will show up, perhaps a drunk guest might fall over on a table and hurt themselves and others or that a hurricane isn’t going to come and blow your wedding away?
The Claims Breakdown
According to Travelers Insurance company claims for couples range in degree, but lets break that down starting with most common client claims. Roughly 44% of all claims were towards a vendor followed by 28% was for damage to the venue or for another vendor (like a catering company, DJ or photographer), 8% was for people being sick, 6% believe it or not was for couples that got deployed quickly in the military, 6% was the wedding dress and damage to it or it not fitting right and the rest, the odd-ball items, 8%.
What Couples Claims Are
Vendor Category Claims
When you break it down with those vendor related claims, 32% were for the wedding venue itself followed by 27% for either wedding photos or videos.
What Most Insurance Will Not Cover
Unless you have it specifically in the policy, a general wedding policy wont typically cover the following:
Theft of Wedding Rings
Loss of Engagement Rings
Switching to a Different Vendor
Change of Heart
Fireworks
Live animals like a guest bringing a dog
Horses (think horse and buggy)
A few Wedding Insurance Vendors We would Recommend are Travelers Insurance, The Event Helper, WedSafe and Wedsure, the company we mentioned earlier.
Carole and I feel that having insurance for your wedding is a great tool to invest in and if you’re having a wedding with a good amount of people and you’re investing thousands into it, the overall cost is well worth the price.