Hello everyone! As mentioned in my post on how to choose a wedding venue marriage is happening next year. We’ve taken out wedding insurance, and today I’m going to look at some of the pro’s and con’s.
An obvious but important note: This post is designed to provide a guide as to some of the general considerations you should think about when taking insurance, but specific policies may include less or more than the average! You’ll need to do your own research to make sure it’s right for you.
What is Wedding Insurance?
Having wedding insurance is designed to protect you financially against events where your wedding is disrupted for reasons beyond your control.
This point of beyond your control is an important one – if you decide not to go ahead yourselves or have had a chance of heart, insurance isn’t going to cover you for that!
Good examples of what are likely to be covered are a caterer pulling out and needing to find a replacement, your venue becoming unavailable (for instance they stop trading) or service provider (such as a photographer) being ill on the day.
The extent of coverage here can vary – basic policies may cover the cost of a last-moment replacement, more advanced policies may provide some coverage for the stress and hassle.
If you’ve got anything that’s a higher risk activity that might have potential to cause bigger damage (fireworks is the classic example) then you’ll usually be asked to apply this when looking for your quote.
I’ve also found it’s a frequent question that you’re asked if you’ll be using ceremonial swords as part of your wedding – I’ve never seen this in practice so clearly I’ve been attending the wrong ones.
When should I take out Wedding Insurance?
As soon as you start booking any kind of service for your wedding.
Whilst it depends on each bit of insurance, there’s usually a clause in there saying that your coverage will only be for services which you’ve booked whilst having cover in place (or within a grace period, such as in the 60 days before you take out insurance).
What do I need to be covered by Wedding Insurance?
So this very much depends on your wedding.
It’s not exactly a happy pleasant exercise, but it’s worth thinking about the worst case scenario for anything you’ve booked – this is usually a supplier going bust and not only being able to provide your booking, but also unable to refund your deposit – disaster!
The common things to think about include the “big” wedding items:
- Venue
- Catering
- Major Supplier, such as photographer or florist
- Other key items such as marquees.
Map out how much exposure you have – you’ll likely have paid a deposit when booking anything, with top up payments later.
If the worst did happen, how much would you lose, and could you be ok with that? When you make the top-up payments, is there a period where you might face a larger loss?
If the answer to those question is that you feel you’re going to be exposed to the point that you feel uncomfortable, insurance may be a sensible option. However, if you’re comfortable with that loss, there’s no obligation to have wedding insurance unless your venue or a supplier insist on it.
Check the policy carefully as individual items may be subject to a cover limit
Will Wedding Insurance cover me if my wedding is disrupted because of Covid-19?
This is obviously the big question because if there’s been one thing likely to have caused disruption to a wedding, it’s COVID!
You should check your specific policy, but the answer so far has been largely no, with some leniency on a couple of points beginning to appear with some insurers. Given the sheer amount of disruption to the wedding industry from COVID, it’s generally not a risk insurers are willing to take.
This can include factors such as having to limit the scale of your wedding because of new restrictions so care is needed.
What does Wedding Insurance not cover?
People sometimes have some misapprehensions about wedding insurance so there’s a couple of things I would flag that specifically aren’t covered:
- Cold Feet/Change of Plans – if you/your partner are the one triggering a change of plans of a wedding not happening, it’s not an event outside your control (although you might think it is) and you won’t be covered.
- Bad Weather – A unfortunate day is not something that wedding insurance will cover – although extreme weather events usually are (but they have to be real outliers).
- Honeymoon – This will need to be covered separately under travel insurance.
How much does Wedding Insurance cost?
Wedding Insurance will generally be on a sliding scale depending on how much coverage you get.
You should use the assessment we did above “how much financial exposure do I have at various points” in order to judge this.
Unfortunately, Wedding Insurance has generally gone up in price since COVID given a number of venues and suppliers found themselves more financially strained.
As a rough approximation, we paid £150 for £25,000 worth of coverage, triggering this 22 months before our wedding by booking the first suppliers.
For avoidance of doubt that’s a £150 total cost, as opposed to a yearly one.
So is Wedding Insurance worth it?
We thought for the £150 that with some relatively large exposures in place (and wanting to also protect family members who were generously helping us out) it was worth taking it out for us.
Ultimately it’s a question of personal risk levels that sit around the question “how would you and your wallet feel if it went wrong”, and if there’s any cause for your wedding that might make it more likely.
Any Questions?
Wedding Insurance is a difficult subject – if you have any specific questions that we haven’t covered above, please do let us know in the comments below and we’ll do our best to add them to the article!
And that’s it!
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