You buy insurance to protect yourself against losses to your car and your house, and now you can buy insurance to protect yourself against losses associated with your beach wedding.
Several US companies are now offering this special kind of insurance and it is surprisingly cheap.
Consider how unhappy you'd be if the caterer or the baker declared bankruptcy a few days before your wedding. What if the photographer or the DJ got sick?
Most of these vendors require a hefty deposit non-refundable upfront (some even want their entire bill paid before the wedding). So, in a worst-case scenario, not only would you be faced with paying a new caterer / baker / photographer / dj, you might never be able to recoup the money you laid out in advance.
A stressful economic period is no time to get stressed out over such matters. Give careful thought to wedding insurance.
Virtually every insurance policy will insure you against the following:
* Failure by vendors to perform their contracted services. This might include a baker who goes bankrupt just before the wedding or a restaurant that closes just before your wedding. Insurance will reimburse you for deposits or the full fee that you made to such vendors. Often, it will also take care of the cost of legal fees to collect from delinquent vendors.
* Weather problems. Remember that the hurricane season lasts from June through the early fall and the entire east coast and gulf coast is vulnerable, as are all of the Caribbean islands, Mexico, and Central America. Coverage is for such major problems that prevent you from holding the wedding as planned or will prevent most of your guests from attending. Afternoon showers are not covered.
* Last-minute cancellation or postponement of the wedding. Should you or the groom be in the military and called to active duty, it might be necessary to postpone the wedding. If you or a close family member could be injured in an accident, contract a sudden illness, or even die, insurance would reimburse for the deposits you lost because it was necessary to change your wedding plans.
* Issues with the photographer or videographer. If they fail to show up or neglect to put film in the camera or arrive with charged batteries, you may be possible to reassemble everyone to create the wedding photos at a later date and receive payment for the expenses associated with this effort.
* Loss or damage to the wedding gown. What if the bridal salon has a fire and your gown has smoke damage? What if the airline mistakenly sends your gown to Siberia? Insurance will certainly reimburse you.
* Stolen wedding rings or wedding gifts. If guests deposit your gifts in a different room while your ceremony is underway and they are stolen, you will usually be fully reimbursed. The same holds if a thief breaks into the car transporting the gifts. And if the wedding rings mysteriously disappear, almost every insurance policy would cover that, too.
* Professional counseling. A few policies provide for payments associated with toward counseling if you are left standing at the altar and you need therapy to work through it. In general, though, if either of you just get cold feet and call the whole thing off, you shouldn't expect an insurance company to help you out in any way.
It's a good idea to start your planning by checking the company that writes your homeowner's or renter's insurance policy. Find out precisely what is and what is not covered under your policy. It's a good idea to ask the manager of the wedding venue about any liability insurance carried. It may be that your current insurer needs only to add a simple and inexpensive rider to your existing policy.
Alternatively, an Internet search will help you to find an independent agent who writes highly specialized policies that cover almost every conceivable bad outcome associated with a wedding that you could imagine.
Your financial circumstances will play a huge role in determining whether it makes sense to purchase supplemental wedding insurance. It's generally a good bet if the money that you might lose altogether would cause substantial harm to your financial situation.
But because specialized or supplemental wedding insurance is so reasonably priced, if you are thinking of a destination or a beach wedding, it is almost always worth it.
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