My brother and niece came to visit for this past holiday.  Their incoming flight was December 19th… the day of that huge snow storm.  They were nearly stranded in Detroit for two days but thankfully caught the last flight out.

What on earth would you do if you were stranded and couldn’t make it to your wedding!

I did some reading as to what sort of options are out there, and there is such a thing as Wedding Insurance.  As explained by The Knot:

Basically, wedding insurance protects a couple’s investment from circumstances beyond their control, and reimburses expenses incurred. For example, what if your limo driver doesn’t show up and you have to book another one the morning of the wedding — for three times the price? Or what if the groom’s custom-made tuxedo is lost in airport baggage, and he has to buy a new one the day before the wedding? What if your reception space goes out of business a month before the wedding, and you lose your deposit and have to book another space? These are the types of big-day financial losses that wedding insurance can help to protect.

From what I’ve read, it appears wedding insurance only cost between 200-500 bucks, depending how much coverage you want.  If you’re planning on spending anything over a few thousand, then I do think this would be a good idea.   I’ve read so many horror stories on indiebride.com lately, namely one of a poor bride with an outside event planned with no backup plan, thinking she’d be safe in her nice walled tent only to get hit by a storm that was tornado conditions at times!  Shudder…

There are a couple vendors that offer wedding insurance, to name a few:

• WedSafe
• Travelers’ Wedding Insurance
• RV Nuccio Special Event Insurance

Now, there are other things to consider other than ‘protect me!’ when purchasing an event insurance protection plan.  Firstly, confirm with your venue and straighten out what sort of liability insurance they’re expecting.  Most of the time a venue will require some sort of minimum in liability insurance.  You could get a combo deal from your insurance broker and get both event and liability insurance at a discount.  Another thing to do is jot down whats most important to you.  Does the weather concern you?  Sickness?  Flaky cousin photographer?  Get this down on paper and use that to ensure your insurance is tailored to your needs; decision making is that much easier with your priorities listed in black and white in front of you.

If after all that thought processing you decide wedding insurance is still not for you, great.  I still urge you to draft some sort of disaster plan.  Things to do and people to contact if things don’t go according to plan.  You’re probably highly doubtful anything could go wrong after all the planning you’ve done, but trust me, it’s good to have an emergency plan.  I know how I felt at the idea of my brother missing Christmas, and how foolish I felt not having phone numbers with me for the airline and hotels and the like.  And besides, look at this as another excuse to make another color coordinated binder with guitar stickers and zebra print fabric.

When in doubt, plan it out!