Wedding Insurance 101 & How to Protect Your Wedding Investments

Protect your peace of mind with wedding insurance, buy online.

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Table of Contents

• WEDDING INSURANCE: WHAT IS IT?

Rings, blog post

Special event wedding insurance protects a couple if they are sued as a result of a mishap at their wedding that injures a guest.

Why Get Wedding Insurance?

Yikes:

  • Right before walking down the aisle, the marquee tent is buffeted by wind and comes loose from its moorings and injures guests and destroys the buffet. The wedding insurance policy will provide the wedding couple with a lawyer to defend the resulting lawsuits from friends and relatives and the policy will also pay for the judgement amounts and will pay for the food and destroyed catering tables.

Blog Post: WEDDING INSURANCE: WHAT IS IT?

• REASONS TO BUY ONLINE INSURANCE FOR WEDDINGS FROM FRONT ROW

  1. Wedding insurance allows you to relax and enjoy the big day. Weddings cost an  average $30,159 in Canada. The hall, the food, the DJ, flowers, photos and all the other costs add up to an expensive day. Wedding insurance provides you with peace of mind. Wedding liability insurance covers you when you are legally responsible for injury or damages that occur at your wedding. If one of your yoga teacher guests slips on spilled wine and tears knee ligaments and cannot work they may sue you for lost income and rehab / medical costs. Wedding liability insurance also provides a lawyer to defend you.
  2. Many wedding venues require that you show evidence of wedding liability insurance. Many venues do not want to be responsibility for situations that happen at your wedding that cause damage to their venue or injury to your guests. This means requiring short-term event insurance from you – the tenant of their venue. Check your venue contract to see if you are responsible for providing a wedding liability certificate to your venue owners. 

Blog Post: REASONS TO BUY ONLINE INSURANCE FOR WEDDINGS FROM FRONT ROW

• WEDDING INSURANCE COST: LESS THAN YOU THINK IF YOU BUY ONLINE

Wedding Table

There are a lot of scenarios that could impact your big day: why not transfer these risks to insurance? You protect your car when you are driving buy buying insurance – why not your wedding…. and at a much lower cost.

Insurance for weddings typically costs less than 1% of your overall budget.

Front Row online wedding insurance also provides wedding cancellation insurance and other coverage to cover your investment, with an option to add liability insurance in case your guests slip and fall while dancing or are injured in some other way.

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Blog Post: WEDDING INSURANCE COST: LESS THAN YOU THINK IF YOU BUY ONLINE

• RENTING OUT YOUR CHURCH, MOSQUE OR OTHER PLACE OF WORSHIP?

Renting out your faith-based venue? Here’s what you need to know about making sure your renters are able to prove to you the insurance protection you deserve.
 Place of worship

If you are an administrator of a church, mosque, synagogue or spiritual venue of any kind, chances are you’ve been asked to rent out your venue for special events such as weddings, birthday parties, meetings, yoga classes or workshops.

Renting your venue is a great way to support your organization’s financial needs and goals but it does come with few warnings and precautions. Whether you’re renting out a small meeting room in your facility or the main hall for thousands of guests, having the right insurance protection ensures you are covered for damage or total destruction of your spiritual space.

The most important way to protect your venue is to ensure whoever is renting from you has the right level of insurance. They need to purchase insurance that considers the following:

    1. Your venue’s capacity and the number of people attending.
    2. Type of event. Are you hosting a wedding, a charity fundraiser, a music show or political workshop?
    3. Will the event include outside food sales or concessions involving alcohol. If alcohol is involved then liquor liability should be purchased.
    4. Key characteristics of your building with respect to rebuilding or repairing damage done by the short term tenant. Have your renter choose a liability limit sufficient to put the facility back into the same shape it was before it was damaged.
    5. Equipment rental coverage. Your renters need to be sure they are covered in case any of the rentals are damaged so that you are not asked to pay for the damage.
    6. Staff safety. Your renter needs to ensure they have full coverage in case anyone gets hurt or injured at their event so that the venue owner is not left paying the medical bills and loss of future earning for the injured person.

Blog Post: RENTING OUT YOUR CHURCH, MOSQUE OR OTHER PLACE OF WORSHIP?

• KEEP YOUR BACKYARD WEDDING ON BUDGET WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON.

Online Wedding Insurance

When you picture your perfect backyard wedding, what do you see? A hug from your mom just before you walk outside; lanterns glowing on the pathways; saying “I do” in the garden you grew up in? Cutting the cake your best friend made for you, and watching the stars come out as candlelight flickers across the faces of your friends and family? Having a wedding at home is a beautiful way to keep your celebration intimate and meaningful, not to mention a smart strategy for keeping your budget in balance on the big day. No matter what your perfect at-home wedding looks like: don’t forget to insure it.

Wedding insurance is easy to get - it takes about 10 minutes online and starts at $115 - and it’s a reliable way to cover yourself (or your parents, if they’re hosting for you) so that your wedding doesn’t include some unwelcome hidden costs. Here are some of the situations that we see commonly come up with home weddings. You'll be covered for:

Guest gets hurt: If someone slips on the dance floor and breaks their ankle, wedding insurance protects everyone. This last one’s really important, because injuries like this can make a big difference to someone’s livelihood. Spilled wine that you didn’t clean up off the dancefloor could end up costing $15,000 or more if your guest’s out of work for a while. Insurance coverage means you don’t need to worry about this all too common scenario.

Blog Post: KEEP YOUR BACKYARD WEDDING ON BUDGET WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON.

• PLANNING A WEDDING AT HOME? WILL YOUR HOMEOWNERS POLICY COVER YOU?

The wedding ceremony in your parent’s back yard was more beautiful than you imagined. Later in the evening, the reception is in full swing when a scream pierces the music on the temporary dance floor. One of your parents work friends – a highly successful yoga instructor– has slipped on some spilled wine and torn all the ligaments in her knee.

She will be in a cast and unable to work for six months. She will not be able to make the $15,000 per month that she has been earning for her classes. She has no disability insurance.

Within weeks of the wedding, a lawyers letter arrives demanding compensation for lost wages due to the hosts negligently failing to clean up the wine hazard on the dance floor. The letter also demands compensation for rehab expenses.

The parents call their homeowners insurance broker only to be told that they needed to take our wedding event insurance in order to be covered. Their homeowners policy will not protect them for a wedding they host at their home. The bride’s parents are now in the awkward position of having to defend themselves from a lawsuit from their friend.

This is a difficult, pricey lesson that is better learned before there is a loss. Our experience tells us that many wedding hosts assume they are covered by their homeowners insurance policy when in fact they most likely are not. This messy scenario is easily avoided with inexpensive online wedding insurance.

Blog Post: PLANNING A WEDDING AT HOME? WILL YOUR HOMEOWNERS POLICY COVER YOU?

• PLANNING A BRIDAL SHOWER? CONSIDER INSURING IT.

Bridal shower

Hosting a shower for the bride? There are many risks associated with a wedding shower that you may not have thought of:

  • Your guests may accidentally damage the venue you have rented. Does your venue require you to provide evidence of insurance? Yikes. Check your rental contract.
  • Are you hosting the party at home? Check with your homeowners broker to see if you are covered. Parties over a certain size are most likely excluded.
  • Have you rented furniture or a sound system or a marquee? Are you responsible to insure the equipment you have rented? Check your rental contract.
  • Your guests could trip on temporary carpeting or slip on a wine spill on the floor and injure themselves. What if your friend or relative is forced to sue you? Awkward? For sure. Will your homeowners insurance cover you? Probably not. Bridal shower event liability insurance will protect you if you are sued by providing a free lawyer to defend you and paying the judgement costs awarded to your injured guest if you are found to be liable.
  • What happens if your marquee blows away and injures other people in the park? Lawsuits from a cartwheeling marquee would be covered with bridal insurance.

Blog Post: PLANNING A BRIDAL SHOWER? CONSIDER INSURING IT.

• CONSIDER PURCHASING BABY SHOWER INSURANCE: 6 REASONS

Baby shower

  • Baby Shower insurance will protect you against damage your guests  accidentally cause to the venue you have rented. Does your venue require you to provide evidence of  venue insurance? Yikes. Check your rental contract.
  • Are you hosting the party at home? Check with your homeowners broker to see if you are covered. Parties over a certain size are most likely not covered.
  • Have you rented furniture or the sound system or a marquee? Are you responsible to insure the equipment you have rented? Check your rental contract.
  • Your guests could trip on temporary carpeting or slip on a drink spill on the floor and injure themselves. What if your friend or relative is forced to sue you? Awkward? No doubt. Will your homeowners insurance cover you? Probably not. Baby shower event liability insurance will cover you if you are sued by providing a free lawyer to defend you and paying the judgement costs awarded to your injured guest.
  • What happens if your tent blows away and injures other people in the park? Lawsuits from a cartwheeling marquee would be covered with baby shower insurance.

Blog Post: CONSIDER PURCHASING BABY SHOWER INSURANCE: 6 REASONS

• HOST LIQUOR LIABILITY INSURANCE – CONSIDER IT FOR YOUR WEDDING

Host Liquor Liability Insurance

If you’re planning to have alcohol served at your wedding, then it is important to consider adding host liquor liability insurance onto your event insurance policy. Your guests will hopefully behave like responsible adults at all times, but in the event that alcohol fuels a fight where someone gets injured or something similarly troublesome, host liquor liability insurance will cover you.

In this post, we’ll provide an all-encompassing overview of host liquor liability insurance, including an explanation of why it should be considered for weddings and some helpful tips on how to discourage overdrinking at weddings.

What is Host Liquor Liability Insurance?

Guests will generally expect liquor to be available at weddings and as soon as you become the “host”, you suddenly have a burden of responsibility to ensure that nothing bad happens as a result of being connected to the supply of that alcohol.

A host liquor liability insurance policy will protect you against losses or damages in case of claims arising from any alcohol-related incidents that might occur at an event such as a wedding. Such “incidents” might include bodily injury or property damage caused by an intoxicated guest who was served liquor at a wedding.

Liquor Liability Terms to Know

What is the difference between Primary liquor liability coverage and Host liquor liability coverage? The main difference between these coverages is whether or not the individual or company buying the insurance engages in the serving of alcohol as a business.

Example: a bar, pub or restaurant would require primary liquor liability insurance, whereas a couple who only wanted to “cover their bases” during a wedding could get host liquor liability insurance.

What does it mean to be “over-served”? This refers to when a customer is served too much alcohol, placing the liability on the bartender. In the US, there is the “Dram Shop Act,” which makes a business which sells alcohol or a host who serves liquor to a drinker who is obviously already intoxicated, strictly liable to anyone injured by the drunken guest. The best protection against a situation like this occurring at your wedding (aside from doing a dry wedding) is to hire an experienced bartender; they generally know when it is time to refuse someone more drinks.

Blog Post: HOST LIQUOR LIABILITY INSURANCE – CONSIDER IT FOR YOUR WEDDING

• HOW TO PREVENT WEDDING CRASHERS

Wedding crashing is the act of attending a wedding celebration without an invitation, particularly when the crashers who show up have a significant impact on the event. This concept was popularized in the 2005 movie Wedding Crashers starring Owen Wilson & Vince Vaughn; however, when wedding crashing happens in real life, it is usually no laughing matter, as you’ll see in the examples below.                                        

In this post, we’ll explain some of the most common motivations behind wedding crashing, provide some examples of real-world wedding crashing incidents and wrap up with 7 tips that you can hopefully use to prevent wedding crashing from happening at your wedding.

Motivations for Wedding Crashing

It’s useful to understand some of the many motivations behind wedding crashing so that you can be better prepared and know what to expect. Wedding crashers are most often looking…

  • To steal money or gifts from the bride, groom, or guests.
  • To witness a person they know, such as a relative, friend, or ex get married, even if they were not invited.
  • For something that is offered at the event, such as free catered food or drinks. Some who crash do so only to eat the hors d'oeuvres. Crashing only for the hors d'oeuvres enables the crasher to eat all s/he wants while blending in.
  • For the simple thrill of deviating from social mores & etiquette or defying the culture.
  • To get revenge, such as if the bride or groom is an enemy of the wedding crasher.
  • To attempt to “win back” the bride/groom who was a former lover and/or current romantic interest of the crasher (such as in The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman).

Examples of Wedding Crashing

It’s important to understand that wedding crashing isn’t always fun & innocent, like in the famous 2005 comedy – it often leads to major thefts occurring. For this reason, wedding crashers should be identified and ejected from weddings as expeditiously as possible. Below are some real-life examples of why you should have a zero-tolerance policy for wedding crashers:

In February 2019, KTLA reported that a well-dressed wedding crasher stole a card box filled with cash gifts worth an estimated $10,000 from a Monrovia, California-area wedding.

In October 2018, Erie News Now reported that a woman walked into a wedding reception in Erie, PA, and stole the couple’s wedding card gift box. Before the theft, the woman spoke to several people inside the reception and made herself appear as though she belonged there.

Blog Post: HOW TO PREVENT WEDDING CRASHERS

• BENEFITS OF HIRING A WEDDING PLANNER


31% of engaged couples seek the help of a wedding planner to assist with their wedding. (Wedding Wire survey, 2017) We at Front Row Insurance anticipate that percentage to continue to increase over the coming decade, as more and more couples will come to realize that reducing their stress by hiring a good wedding planner is well worth the investment.

In this post, we’ll look at some of the brief history of the wedding planning profession, look at the main benefits of hiring a wedding planner and conclude with some helpful tips on what to look for when hiring a wedding planner.

The History of the Wedding Planner

The concept of a wedding planner perhaps first came to widespread public attention with the release of the 2001 romcom The Wedding Planner starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. Although the movie received generally negative reviews, it was a box office hit and no doubt helped the wedding planning profession as a whole.

Wedding planning is a relatively young profession, as through most of time weddings were simply planned by the families themselves. But today, with the average wedding costing ~$28,000 USD, if you’re already making such a substantial investment, it makes sense to hire a dedicated consultant to manage the complexity of it all.

Benefits of Hiring a Wedding Planner

Let’s look at some of the primary benefits of hiring a wedding planner:

  • Time savings: the average wedding takes 200+ hours to plan. As the bride or groom, you’d likely prefer being able to hand off those administrative & coordination duties to an experienced professional, so you can enjoy the anticipation of your wedding.
  • Relieves stress: along with purchasing a Wedding Insurance policy, one of the most effective ways to have a less stressful wedding is to hire an experienced wedding planner. You simply won’t have to worry about as much and if something does go wrong on the wedding day, a good planner will be there to put out any fires.
  • Fresh ideas: wedding planners will usually strive to provide you with a more special & unique wedding than you would have had without hiring one. Planners generally know both the latest trends and classic ideas for wedding inspiration, so they’ll attempt to deliver something more than just a “cookie-cutter wedding”.
  • Valuable advice: an experienced wedding planner will know the “ins and outs” of the wedding industry, including great venues to consider and the best caterers, bands, DJs and florists in the area (or at least acceptable ones to fit your budget).

Blog Post: BENEFITS OF HIRING A WEDDING PLANNER

WEDDING INSURANCE UNITED STATES

Insuring your US Wedding

Insuring your US Wedding with Front Row Insurance Brokers is a fast and simple process so you feel confident that your big day is protected – you deserve to enjoy it worry free.

  • Up to $2,000,000 in General Liability Coverage.
  • Additional Insured certificates for your venue at no additional cost.
  • Liquor liability coverage is also available.

Many wedding venues require that you show evidence of wedding liability insurance. Most United States wedding venues do not want to be responsible for injury to your guests and they want you to repair damage to their party venue that you cause.

Blog Post: WEDDING INSURANCE USA (EXAMPLES)

Blog Post: WEDDING INSURANCE USA

Wedding Insurance 101 & How to Protect Your Wedding Investments

Protect your wedding investments with wedding insurance.

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