Protecting against a wedding disaster

Insuring your wedding can be cheap – but it can prove priceless.

For many people, a wedding is the most special day of their lives, and something going wrong doesn’t bear thinking about.

Wedding insurance can’t prevent mishaps on your big day, but it can help put them right.

A wedding can often be more than a year in the planning, and that gives plenty of opportunities for the unforeseen to happen.

On average, ceremonies are more expensive than they used to be – thanks in part to more people getting married (or remarried) in later life when they have more money at their disposal. That makes cover for any mishap even more important.

Typically, wedding insurance policies protect most aspects of the celebration. They provide cover for rings, cakes, flowers, suppliers, damage to dresses and outfits, photographs, videos, cancellation and curtailment, public liability and loss of documents. Cover can also be taken out for marquees.

Policies can cost as little as £30 or up to several hundred pounds. As with all insurance, the more comprehensive the cover, the higher the premiums.

According to Ecclesiastical Insurance, the top three types of claim are for supplier failure, cancellation and redundancy.

Claims don’t even have to be for the whole event going down the drain – if the wedding photos don’t develop, for example, some policies will pay for them to be retaken.

Nicki Parry, a spokesman for Moneysupermarket.com, said: “It really does make sense to pay a relatively small amount to get adequate cover for your big day.

“If anything were to go wrong, although it would not make you feel better, it would be some comfort to know that you could make a claim to recover some of the money that you’d spent to create the perfect day.”