Cold feet at the wedding? There’s insurance for that

For those of you who are engaged, you can now protect yourself in case your soon to be spouse decides to split and leave you standing at the altar brokenhearted and quite literally, broke.

It is wedding insurance and its gaining popularity all over the country. It is available for not only for the bride and groom, but also for the parents or anyone who will be paying for the wedding.

Seem ridiculous? Seem like the insurance industry is just out to make another buck? Maybe, but it could come in handy, on many levels.

According to NBC News’ Michael Melia, the average cost of an American wedding is around $26,000. This may surprise some, however, when you think of all the costs that a wedding demands, including those related to venue, food and beverage, dresses and tuxedos, flowers, invitations, music or DJ, favors, pictures, videos, etc., that large number starts making sense.

The other thing that makes sense is purchasing insurance to protect this rather large investment and many across the country are doing just that.

Some call it event insurance or wedding insurance, but I am going to call it smart insurance. There are so many things that could happen resulting in a cancelled wedding or a postponement.

It could be the weather, an illness, a fire, an accident, or, in the worst case, a soon-to-be spouse with cold feet or a change of heart. It would be bad enough to not have the wedding you were planning for but to be left with a stack full of bills that could cause you to seek bankruptcy protection, or the wrath of your parents, would be salt in the wound.

Sure, you might have a valid contract with all your vendors but the cost of suing on that contract would often outweigh the contract itself.

Even if you both show up to the altar and have the wedding on time, things can still go wrong. You could have to move the event inside because of weather, thus incurring an extra charge. Something could happen to the bride’s dress (such as the tailor burning a hole while pressing it) or, as cited by Melia, the limo driver could fail to appear after you paid them a deposit and you are forced to hire another form of transportation at the last minute. The insurance could cover the deposit you paid to the limo driver and the cost of hiring someone new.

Understand that this is a very limited type of insurance and not all providers offer it. Your best bet would be to contact your personal insurance agent and discuss it with them. Your other option is to Google the term “wedding insurance” and go from there.

I do not even want to think of how much I pay for insurance on the whole. My family has several types of insurance including car, home, umbrella, health, renter’s, landlord, malpractice, life and pet insurance.

I was married several years ago and did not know that this type of insurance existed. It is obvious from my insurance history above, I like to protect myself. As such, I can say with certainty that had I known of its existence I definitely would have purchased the wedding coverage because, even though I knew my hubby would be there waiting for me at the altar, I also knew that not everything is as predictable!