The Last Marriage Consideration is Wedding Insurance
You and your spouse-to-be fell blissfully in love. One of you proposed; the other said yes.
You told your family. You told your friends. You told random strangers in line at the movie theater. It’s love. You just want to share it.
You finally started planning this day you have become so excited over and cannot wait to get married. Then the not so joyous planning of the joyous day hit you.
You set a date and that took some work because the wedding date hinged on finding somewhere, anywhere big enough for all the people that you, your fiancé, your parents, their parents, the grandparents, and your best friends plus your co-workers said you needed to invite. That was when it hit you. The planning process will be as long as the sentence I threw in about everyone who wants to add to the guest list.
Go ahead and laugh. It will be months before you do that again unless you elope. (Hey, it worked for my older sister.)
So, before you jump too far into the planning process of Your Big Day, consider what will probably become the cheapest thing you purchase for your wedding – the wedding insurance. The cost of a policy ranges between $100 to $500.
Do not even say that costs a lot. Consider what the average wedding costs.
| Country | Average Wedding Costs |
|---|---|
| USA | $29,000 |
| UK | £22,500 ($28,000) |
| Canada | $30,000 |
| Australia | $54,295 |
Now that you have a clear idea of how much you will spend on your happy day (elope), the $100/$500 to protect the investment in the wedding festivities seems pretty dang tiny, doesn’t it?
Yeah. Thought so.
Why You Need Wedding Insurance
You pay for everything in advance with a wedding. At the very least, you have to place down payments on the services, venues, and equipment rentals. Those services include the photographer, the minister, the band or DJ for the reception, the wedding ceremony musicians, the caterers, the baker for the cake.
You purchase the dress, tux, plus the bridesmaids and groomsmen attire outright. The same goes for the shoes, the flowers, the decorations.
You might need to contract with a bartender, wait staff, coat check personnel, and more. Perhaps you’ll rent a margarita machine as my friends Stephanie and Bryan did.
When you look at the costs of marriage in most major countries, it costs about the same as purchasing a really nice car. However, with a car, you can take an auto loan and space out the repayment. With a wedding, sure, you can take out a wedding loan, but you should not go into your new marriage in debt. Ideally, you can pay for your wedding out-of-pocket. This may take a lot of saving or some savvy shopping or cost-cutting measures, but you can do it.
The high cost of a marriage ceremony requires investment protection. That is wedding insurance. It protects your investment in the day you become husband and wife or husband and husband or wife and wife. You waited to find the love of your life and you deserve to have the perfect day to remember when you joined in matrimony.
What Wedding Insurance Does
A wedding insurance policy protects you from unforeseen occurrences that would potentially ruin your big day or your finances. If you live in the US, your wedding probably costs more than $24,000. That probably makes it one of the biggest investments you have made so far unless you financed your own college education or purchased a home.
Could you afford to lose the $4,000 wedding dress cost or the $12,790 the average caterer costs? What would you do if you just lost that much money?
That can happen if a business you paid in advance goes out of business or a tornado hits the hotel you booked for the reception. Wedding insurance pays you the money you would have lost so you can hire a new caterer or book a new venue.
Types of Wedding Insurance
Wedding policies come in two types – liability and cancellation; you will need both policies. They cover different things. The liability policy protects your financial future, rather like an auto policy’s liability pays for injury to other people you cause. The cancellation policy protects you from losing money now. Here are the specifics of how it does that.
Cancellation Insurance
Like a homeowners’ policy, cancellation insurance includes named perils. That just means a specific cause or reason such as fire or an extreme weather event. If you must postpone the ceremony because you or someone directly involved with the ceremony, typically a nuclear family member, falls ill or gets injured, the policy covers the non-refundable fees you would typically get charged.
This also reimburses you for vendors who go out of business or do not show up for the wedding or event related to it. The typically named perils include the same you find in a home policy – fire, wind/tornado, severe storm, snowstorm, ice storm, hail, burst pipes, etc. The cancellation policy also includes the death of a family member or either of the betrothed, military deployment, venues that go bankrupt, and earthquake. Talk about comprehensive.
Liability Insurance
The liability insurance of a wedding policy consists of two components. The first component, alcohol insurance, most venues require you to purchase. This protects you and the venue as well as the servers and bartenders when you serve alcoholic beverages at the wedding brunch, rehearsal dinner, or reception.
The second component, bodily injury, and property damage pay for the settlement and your attorney fees and court costs if the venue incurs damage or someone gets hurt at the wedding, reception, or another included event at the wedding. An included event varies by policy, but typically includes the ceremony and the reception at a minimum. You can add events such as your brunch, rehearsal dinner, bachelor and bachelorette party, etc.
The bodily injury sub-component of your liability insurance component provides coverage for items like slip and fall accidents and that random fight you just know will break out between your cousin and your younger brother after a few bourbons or beers, take your pick. It pays their medical bills and any settlement costs if anyone sues. This also protects the venue since it provides a policy that will pay damages so the venue does not have to do so.
This portion of the insurance policy also pays for any damages they brawlers cause to the venue. Let’s say your cousin and brother break a few tables and a chair and the margarita machine. Oops. You would otherwise owe the venue for their tables and chair and the caterer for the margarita machine, but your wedding insurance pays for all of it.
Can You Add to Your Policy?
Sure, you can! A few special types of coverage exist. You can insure the wedding dress, the tuxedo, the gifts, photographs, and don’t forget jewelry insurance for the rings. The clothing-related insurance covers things like tears in the dress, dry cleaning mistakes, damage in shipping, etc. Insured photographs can include those used in the ceremony and those taken on the day of the ceremony. Perhaps you have family heirloom photographs on display at the wedding reception and want them insured. Insuring the rings probably seems a no brainer. You just spent thousands on them.
Who Can Buy Wedding Insurance?
No limitations exist to who can purchase wedding insurance. You only need to have a wedding or a civil ceremony. All kinds of weddings and couples can purchase a policy. Wedding insurance covers all of the following the same way:
traditional male groom and female bride
same-sex couple
gender non-conforming couple
Where Can You Buy Wedding Insurance?
You could obtain a wedding insurance policy from nearly any insurance agency, but choosing a company that specializes in this type of policy will probably serve you better. You will gain the benefit of their expertise plus their rates will probably cost a bit less. Here is a quick look at the top companies selling this product. When you start insurance shopping, you will find out that the insurance industry sometimes refers to this as special event insurance.
1. Best Choice for Military Families: USAA
It probably does not surprise anyone in the military or with family in the military that USAA offers this policy type. The company tries to be all things to all people. They refer to their wedding insurance product as special event insurance. One reason to choose them, if you can, is that they also cover destination weddings. Some companies only cover domestic ceremonies, meaning on US soil. USAA covers domestic plus ceremonies held in its territories, possessions, Canada, and on cruises leaving ports in either country. Other covered locations include the UK, Mexico, Bahamas, Bermuda, the Caribbean Islands, and cruises leaving all of those ports.
2. Best Bundle: Wedsure
Just $125 buys you a million-dollar policy that covers alcohol service, property damage, and liability. You can add wedding cancellation, gifts, jewelry, photography, special attire, rented property, professional counseling, and loss of deposits. Their cancellation policy also covers your honeymoon. That comes in handy if you planning a cruise, but a hurricane hits the islands. The website lets you obtain a quote with a click or two.
3. Best Reputation: Travelers
While most of the companies you find that offer wedding insurance you would only hear of when buying wedding insurance, the venerable Travelers company offers it. Not only do they offer it, but they provide some of the most flexible options available. You can build your own policy including cancellation, photography, gifts, special attire, special jewelry, lost deposits, liability, and liquor liability.
4. Cheapest Full Policy: Ewed Insurance
Let’s say you really have a budget ceremony in mind. Your penny pinching has netted you a great dress at a discounted cost, you cut a deal with a venue where a friend works, your parents’ minister friend agreed to perform the ceremony for nothing. You, money-saving consumers! You go, girl or guy! Nab this policy to protect yourself. For $75, you get their micro wedding policy. It covers events with 50 individuals or less involved. Its cancellation portion provides coverage of $5,000. The company has many other options as well. They also have a reputation in the industry as the fastest underwriters.
5. Cheapest Custom Policy: The Event Helper
This special events insurance company lets you make a custom policy complete with location by state, length of coverage, event type, and attendance. An insurance cost calculator on the website lets you calculate the cost of coverage by those criteria. That lets you know that a one-day wedding for 50 people in California costs $77.14 for a basic insurance policy, but a three-day wedding in New York for 300 people would cost $136 to insure. (You might balk at a three-day ceremony, but that is common in many cultures, such as the Indian culture. They hold multi-day events with feasts, parties, and a ceremony, hence the higher cost for their weddings.)
6. Liability Specialists: WedSafe, an Affinity Insurance Services, Inc. company
Affinity’s WedSafe company specializes in liability coverage. It provides the coverage most venues require and insures you and your event against “wedding mishaps” and vendor accidents, glitches, and incidents. While the US government continues restrictions on gatherings, the company has suspended its event cancellation product. Its website states that it will resume offering that component of a full policy once the government lifts its restrictions. They also admit that they have fallen behind on responding to claims after being inundated due to COVID-19. If you plan a wedding during the pandemic, you should expect it to take longer for each company to respond to your inquiries.
7. Best Liability Coverage: Markel Insurance
While Markel typically offers both liability and cancellation, at this time, you may only be able to obtain the liability coverage. I say maybe because, on September 18, 2020, Markel reduced its own market temporarily. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company will only write policies in select states. While their policies up to that date did include “loss due to communicable diseases,” policies written on or after September 18 do not. They continue to write liability policies in all states though. This company remains an insurance gem though. They pay even the quirkiest claims. For example, at one couple’s wedding, a confetti cannon stained the venue’s dance floor. The company paid the liability claim of the venue which received $3,000 to redo its floor.
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Read Your Policy!
Insurance policies work like this – if it says it covers it, it does. If it does not specifically say it covers it, it does not.
You laugh, but it is true. You need to read your policy documents completely before you sign them. Once you sign and pay your premium, your policy covers you but only for what you paid for and that gets enumerated in the policy documents. As boring as they may seem to slog through, you have to do it.
Consider it all need to know information. You cannot live without knowing that the videographer needs his own coverage because you paid for photography coverage. Yes, insurance companies get that anal. They have to be like that. They would go broke otherwise.
You need to know every named-peril so you know what is covered. Would you guess that a California wildfire that occurred weeks before the wedding would qualify as a named peril? It did for a couple insured by Markel. California wildfires destroyed the winery the couple had reserved for their wedding. The policy payout to a couple of nearly $37,000 let them find and pay for a new location for their wedding.
Your insurance company does not do it for you. You must read the documents and act in your own best interests. You must phone them when something occurs to start the paperwork and file the claim.
What No Policy Covers
Cold feet. Terrified future spouses. Rejecting adulting.
If you or your future spouse just randomly change your mind, you pay the costs. The insurance does not cover that. Know what you are getting into and make sure you really love each other. As my dad would have said, “Look, before you leap.” and as my mama would have said, “Love. Love each other.”