Do I need Wedding Insurance?

Now that it’s finally warm outside, its not just summer, its wedding season! As you prepare to walk down the aisle, you may have been told you need insurance for your wedding. Do you? After all, isn’t a wedding just a private event? What could you need insurance for?

Well, just to start, if you look hard enough there is someone willing to sell you insurance for just about anything. That doesn’t mean you need to buy it. There are three basic categories that come under the heading of “wedding insurance.” They are wedding liability insurance, wedding gift and jewelry coverage, and event cancelation insurance. While these all cover real things, you personally may not need some or all of them.

Two out of the three of these have elements included in your renters or homeowner’s insurance policy. Wedding liability insurance is a personal liability insurance policy that covers bodily injury and property damage including liquor liability, specifically for the event. It usually costs somewhere from $100-$300 depending on the size of the event. Well, all forms of homeowner’s insurance (including renters and condo) covers personal liability. Personal liability covers bodily injury and property damage that you cause while acting as a private citizen. (Of course there are limits to this, but getting married isn’t one of them and neither is liquor.) Personal liability insurance policies, however, generally cannot list other parties (like your venue) as additional insured, while a special event policy can. Your insurance agent can provide proof of coverage to the venue for you.

The most important thing to do is to make sure the parties covered for the homeowner’s policy are the parties getting married. In this case, it’s not a bad idea to add your spouse to your homeowner’s insurance before the actual wedding day. And, if it was the parents that signed the contracts to rent the venue, than it is their homeowner’s insurance covering the event.

At the very least, ask your venue if they will accept your homeowner’s insurance instead of a special policy – it can be a source of significant savings for something that you already have.

Wedding gift and jewelry coverage is strictly personal property insurance with more narrowly defined covered property. Your homeowner’s insurance provides coverage for your property anywhere, not just in your home. The issue here is sub-limits to covered property. When people think of what could happen to wedding gifts, they are mainly concerned with theft, theft of cash and checks. Actual physical gifts are mainly sent ahead of the wedding. Your homeowner’s insurance usually limits theft of cash to about $500. Weddings often involve more, much more. Some wedding gift policies can cover larger amounts of cash, but require that you estimate the amount beforehand, which presents its own challenge. A better solution might be giving all the cards in a lock box to a responsible member of the wedding party to be retrieved the after the event. If you are in a hotel, give the box to the front desk to put into the hotel safe.

Wedding policies also often cover wedding rings and jewelry. This is universally covered (but limited) on homeowners insurance. Since you will have your wedding jewelry forever, short term insurance doesn’t make much sense. Yes, it’s only a few dollars to add to the wedding insurance policy, but if you annualize that amount, it’s not a very good deal for the year. Fine jewelry should be placed on a jewelry floater, or rider on your homeowners insurance that specifically lists the items and values, and is supported by documentation if necessary.

This leaves us with wedding cancelation insurance. There is no equivalent homeowner’s coverage that you may already have. Event cancelation insurance pays you for your out of pocket expenses should your wedding be delayed or canceled due to a specified list of reasons (and yes “change of heart” can be a coverage trigger). It returns deposits lost to the travel, venue, caterer, photographer, band, limo, et cetera. Before purchasing this insurance, compare it to the refund policies of your individual vendors. If your venue will refund your deposit in case of severe weather such as a hurricane (or re-schedule for no additional cost) then why purchase what is basically a refund policy through insurance? This is an especially important consideration for “destination weddings” where severe weather can prevent travel.

The take away message of this is not that wedding insurance is never needed. Each couple should evaluate what they already have on their homeowner’s insurance and what they actually need. Best wishes to all the brides to be!