Protect your big day with wedding insurance

When a wedding gets canceled or postponed, there are often deposits owed to vendors and venues. If the cancellation is last minute, actual services, flowers, and food may potentially be charged to you. Wedding insurance can help cover those costs.

• Severe weather forces you to postpone the wedding to the next day. Too bad you still have to pay the band, chair/tent rental company, cake maker, and caterer. Wedding insurance can pickup that tab!
• Your parent has an unanticipated heart attack. Fortunately, they're okay but you postpone the wedding so that they can attend. Unfortunately, that means losing your deposits to the vendors supporting your wedding. Wedding insurance may cover lost deposits in this circumstance.
• Your soon-to-be spouse is unexpectedly deployed for military service, leading to the cancellation of the wedding (at least for the moment). This leaves you on the hook for deposits to the caterer, rental company, venue, photographer, and more. Once again, wedding insurance may cover those expenses.

When guests start to have a few drinks and go to the dance floor things can get a little crazy. sometimes leading to property damage, injuries, or driving while intoxicated.

• One of your guests has had a bit too much to drink and on the way home gets into an accident that results in injuries. Liquor liability insurance would step-in to help provide you with legal defense and cover damages.
• Aunt Sally has had a couple more drinks than she's used to and, while enthusiastically recreating her winning cheerleading routine from 1987, trips and crashes into the photographer's equipment. Sally is okay (phew!) but a few thousand dollars of camera and lenses are not. Your liquor liability insurance steps in and covers the damage.
• Just in case a couple of guests decide to get feisty after a few too many, in many cases alcohol related assault & battery is covered.

Weddings are booked months or even years in advance, and sometimes the vendors and venues are simply no longer there when the time comes for the big day. If you lose deposits as a result, wedding insurance can step in.

• A wedding photographer and videographer doesn't keep their vow and fails to arrive at your wedding. As a result, you hire a different photographer and the venue for a different day to recreate your wedding photos.
• Your wedding photographer is amazing! Unfortunately the little SD card his camera uses to store photos isn't. As a result you lose your most precious memories and have to reshoot the wedding party photos at extra expense.
• That awesome band you already put a deposit on . . . they just broke up over "artistic differences" right before your big event. Wedding insurance could cover your lost deposit.
• You've found the perfect place for your wedding and you've had it booked for months. Too bad your perfect venue just closed down and now you've lost your deposit. Wedding insurance may well cover that lost deposit.

Your wedding will probably be the perfect day you imagine it to be, but if it's not wedding liability insurance has your back. Liability insurance protects you in the event of injuries and physical damage. It's also worth noting that many venues now require a "certificate of liability insurance" as proof that you carry this coverage.

• A guest at your wedding slips and falls on the dance floor, requiring emergency medical treatment. Liability insurance may cover their medical bills up to the limits specified in your policy.
• Your uncle Phil is showing your niece Jill his new and improved "robot" dance when he quickly backs into the photographer's equipment shattering a very expensive camera.
• Note: If someone causes damage or injury while intoxicated, that's not covered under this part of the policy. Please be sure to check out the Liquor Liability section of this page if you'll be serving alcohol of any kind at your wedding.

Wedding insurance can cover the loss or damage of many of the more costly physical items involved in your wedding. These include wedding attire, special jewelry, rings, and wedding gifts.

• The day before your wedding, your best friend, a Yorkie named "Fido," manages to find your dress under your bed . . . by the time you get home, the dress is in tatters. Wedding insurance could cover the cost of repairs or even the dress itself.
• While delivering the wedding rings down the dock, the ring bearer slips and the ring ends up in the river . . . Yup, wedding insurance can cover that.
• You've stacked up the wedding gifts to be loaded into the car, too bad one of your guests didn't see them as they drove off. The resulting collision damages many of your gifts. Wedding insurance could pay to repair or replace those gifts!