Anyone who has ever planned a wedding knows that there is a big checklist of decisions to be made. From the cake and flowers, to the dress, every detail needs to be planned down to the letter. Perhaps one of the most important decisions that couples make is the venue where they will be hosting their wedding. One aspect of this decision includes whether to buy wedding insurance or not. Basically, wedding insurance has two types of policies. The first is a liability insurance that covers incidents like property damage or physical injury that might occur at the wedding. The second is a cancellation policy that serves to reimburse the couple if, for some reason out of their control, the wedding cannot take place. Many couples opt out of the decision because they doubt that anything could go wrong, but COVID-19 had other plans for these couples. Many weddings were cancelled or postponed due to the fact that wedding insurance was not purchased. It’s such a simple thing to acquire, and even if couples do not end up needing to use it, it is always better to be safe, rather than sorry. I think that when someone is planning something so important, like a wedding, why risk the chance of something happening and having it ruin that special day? So, will wedding insurance be added to the top of a couples checklist when they are planning their weddings in the future, given what happened when COVID-19 hit?
At the end of May, over Memorial Day Weekend, my cousin was supposed to get married. She was super excited and had been planning her wedding for a long time. Unfortunately COVID-19 emerged, and her dream wedding had to be postponed until June 2021. It took a long time to sort out, but my cousin was able to keep her wedding at the same venue, and just had to change the date. If she had decided against getting wedding insurance, COVID-19 would have had a bigger effect on her wedding. It would have been considerably harder for her to reschedule with the same venue, not to mention that all the vendors she already paid most likely would not have given her the money back. I think she made the smart choice when deciding to have wedding insurance because then no matter what happened, she would still be able to have her wedding in the future. While my cousin was lucky enough to have that happen to her, many couples who had weddings ruined by COVID-19 were not so lucky. Many couples have now decided to forgo big, extravagant weddings, and instead just have small socially distant backyard weddings. A New York Times article talking about this issue brings up Namisha Balagopal and Suhaas Prasad from San Francisco who, even after purchasing wedding insurance, decided to have a small backyard wedding with only 10 people, when their original wedding had over 300 guests.
Now insurance companies are saying that COVID-19 is not covered under most liability or cancellation policies. The companies are saying that the coronavirus is not a valid reason for enacting a policy, and that they will not pay. Many of the couples who were supposed to get married in 2020 are either rescheduling their weddings for a later date or restructuring their wedding to abide by social distancing rules, but the biggest question is, what will those who are just getting engaged do for their wedding?
Planning anything during a worldwide pandemic will definitely have its challenges. You never know how long this will go on or if our society will ever return to its normal ways. But one thing that is for sure is that couples who are just beginning to plan weddings need to look in depth at wedding insurance policies. While many couples opted out of insurance before, I believe that now is a very time to look into getting some. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we need to expect the unexpected and never take anything for granted. So, when planning weddings in the future, don’t put your dream at risk by not covering it with something as simple as a wedding insurance policy.
If you’re wedding was postponed or canceled due to COVID-19, check out this guide to planning a backyard wedding!
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