Wedding Insurance Articles

If you’ve ever wondered whether getting wedding insurance abroad is a fashionable fad or a wise decision, you might do worse than have a quiet word with Denise and Mike, a happy  couple who have now been married for six months, but who very nearly didn’t get married at all.

After many months of planning their wedding day finally dawned. They had decided against a grey and damp wedding at home and had jetted off for the somewhat sunnier climes of Jamaica.
 
Images of hot, white sandy beaches, azure oceans and seemingly endless supplies of rum served beneath the swaying palms filled their heads. Unfortunately the closest they managed to get to this sort of image was an occasional brief squint through the bathroom window in the free moments between worshipping the god Lavatory.

It seems that the night before the wedding party had enjoyed some very agreeable seafood delicacies. Except that the seafood in question wasn’t quite as agreeable as it seemed, and ended up in outright disagreement with their stomachs. The wedding day saw every single member of the party locked in their respective bathrooms.

Sadly Denise and Mike barely saw each other all day, and didn’t even get close to the whole bit about ‘in sickness and in health’.

Fortunately they had decided quite some time ago to take out wedding insurance abroad, which meant that they were able to recoup the money lost and rearranged the wedding for a later date. And they made quite sure that they stayed clear of seafood for the entire time!

Although credit card insurance, travel insurance, health insurance and other forms of insurance might assist in a few small ways, when it comes to an expensive wedding abroad you need a more comprehensive means of protecting your investment, and for the relatively small price of taking out wedding insurance abroad you can at least avoid financial disaster; avoiding digestive disasters is rather more up to you however.

Alice and Mike aren’t psychic, but chose to take out wedding insurance abroad because they were simply being practically minded. Some might consider them lucky, and certainly having wedding insurance abroad was good news. But neither Alice nor Mike would go as far as to suggest that they were lucky…

Paphos Harbour, birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite; the gulls called lazily to one another across the endlessly rolling azure waves lapping against the cotton white brightness of the private yacht on which their wedding was to take place.

The Best Man saw the azure waves better than most. In fact he saw them really close up – from the inside. He fell overboard, which in itself might have been considered slightly amusing. At least, it could have seemed amusing had he not been holding the wedding rings at the time.

The wedding rings are still to this day lying somewhere at the bottom of Paphos Harbour. The more romantically minded souls might consider them a gift to Aphrodite herself. However, neither the Bride nor the Groom were especially inclined to consider the loss of their rings as being any kind of gift.

Although their rings had been purchased using their credit card, the insurance normally associated with credit card purchases didn’t cover them for loss of their rings abroad. Fortunately, their wedding insurance abroad policy did cover them for such eventualities. Perhaps the insurance companies anticipate a few dippings each year.

References to the Best Man being a little wet behind the ears or drinking like a fish were of course the order of the day, although whether he remained a friend of the couple afterwards isn’t known.

But it does demonstrate clearly that you can plan the most perfect wedding imaginable thousands of miles away perfectly easily, and yet still see the whole thing can be nearly ruined thanks to a single shoelace. If you’re planning to get married overseas, make sure you either take out wedding insurance abroad, or Velcro the Best man to the deck.

If you’re planning a wedding abroad, and you don’t yet have a wedding insurance abroad policy, make sure you’re sitting down before you read this.

In fact, make sure you’re completely calm, and in a peaceful state of mind. For Rita and Carl, the weeks leading up to their Caribbean wedding were mostly like this. The image of Paradise filled their dreams, with everything in place well in advance, the deposits paid, their flights booked, and their bags almost entirely packed.

The day they were to fly to the warm and sunny paradise dawned. Their flight was delayed twelve hours due to snow. Somehow you don’t think of snow in the Caribbean do you?

The snow was in fact over much of the north of England, and their flight was not looking promising. You can probably imagine the pacing, the fretting and the frantic worrying which took place over those twelve hours, not knowing whether they’d make it or not.

Finally, the flight was cleared for takeoff – they boarded, and they breathed a sigh of relief as the ground slipped away beneath them, and the promise of that balmy destination seemed real again.

For Rita and Carl, Mother Nature really wasn’t on their side. A hurricane during the night had blown the roof off the venue, and crushed the wedding limousine under one of the palm trees which was supposed to be part of the Paradise image they had in mind.

Still, at least those little problems helped to put into perspective the problem with the Registrar who had food poisoning. Unfortunately, the fact that the wedding planner had somehow managed to misspell Carl’s name on the official paperwork did mean that he’d either have to very quickly change his name by Deed Poll or accept a further delay.

Sometimes Paradise can seem awfully close to Hell. Now, about your wedding – have you sorted out your wedding insurance abroad policy yet?

Which is cheaper? Wedding insurance abroad, or a simple travel insurance policy? Clearly the travel insurance is likely to be a good deal less, so when you add in the credit card protection you probably already have, plus your health insurance, home insurance and third toenail on the left insurance, do you really need a wedding insurance abroad policy too? Does it really add anything except yet more expense to what is almost certainly likely to be the most expensive day of your life.

John and Sue didn’t think so. They left for Jamaica intent on the dream wedding. It was all looking perfect, the sun, the sand, the surf, the coconut rum. There was only one slight drawback to the whole event. The venue got the dates wrong.

The happy couple-to-be arrived with high anticipation of the most incredible time of their lives. The venue had anticipations of their own, which included a coach party of twenty Japanese tourists, and a wedding they were sure was scheduled for the following week.

In fact, for a while it looked as though the closest John and Sue were going to get to a roof over the heads was the sunset, and sadly they didn’t feel terribly inclined to savour its fiery hues.

Perhaps the lucky fact in this tale is that John and Sue had been saving up to place a deposit on their first home, and in desperation they dipped into their savings in order to pay the costs involved in extending their stay, and rescheduling the entire event. Naturally this involved a huge bill, much inconvenience, and several days’ of phone calls and worry.

Jamaica may be the ideal place to relax, but for John and Sue, not having wedding insurance abroad was anything but relaxing, and their dream of buying their own home had to be shelved for the foreseeable future. Wedding insurance abroad can be a rum old business.

Can’t make up your mind about wedding insurance abroad? Neither could a certain young couple who recently jetted off to Cyprus for a dream wedding. For the sake of argument we’ll call them Keith and Jenny, since those are their names.

Keith and Jenny were always very careful when it came to money, and their entire wedding was costed using a pretty neat and somewhat sophisticated spreadsheet. It seemed that every aspect of their wedding would ‘Excel’. They’d been saving up for ages, and were delighted when the figures came out saying ‘yes’ – they could afford their ideal wedding.

As far as wedding insurance abroad was concerned, they already knew that they had protection through their credit card providers’ policies, and they had home insurance, travel insurance and health insurance all in place.

Sadly, they overlooked two things – wedding insurance abroad and seafood.

The day before their Big Day Keith, Jenny and their close family and friends all enjoyed an outstanding day around Cyprus, including Paphos Harbour – the setting for Aphrodite’s rise from the waves. It couldn’t have been more romantic, and seafood was on the menu. Unfortunately the romance tended to take something of a dive once Keith, Jenny and several members of the wedding party all found themselves spending an unexpectedly long period of time locked in their respective bathrooms.

Never mind walking down the aisle – Jenny couldn’t even leave her bathroom, and Keith wasn’t much better.

Although their health insurance would have covered them for anything more serious or expensive, and their credit card policies would have covered them had the wedding rings been stolen or the florist gone bankrupt. But as they didn’t have a wedding insurance policy abroad, they had to cancel the whole thing. They managed to enjoy a few days in Cyprus, steering well clear of the seafood, and although they ended up getting married, the registry office in Bolton wasn’t quite the same as a flower strewn hilltop overlooking an azure ocean in the Mediterranean.

The moral? Think about wedding insurance abroad, and always check your seafood: if it’s moving, either avoid it or ask it for the bill.

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So where does all this money go? Read More »

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According to wedding insurance provider Marks & Spencer, demand for wedding insurance is increasing in the run up to Valentines Day.

They claim that the weeks after Valentines Day are typically the busiest for the firm, with many couples keen to ensure their special day is protected.  Wedding insurance helps protect against financial loss following things like damaged attire, suppliers going out of business or even cancellation of the whole day. Read More »

Engagement Ring

It’s coming up to Valentines Day and many nervous men are currently planning on how they’re going to “pop the question” to their loved one in just a few days time.  Many will have already purchased an engagement ring, and many will still be thinking about buying one.

Whilst researching for an article on Tesco wedding insurance earlier today, I happened to notice that Tesco Direct appear to be selling engagement rings. The nosey person that I am, I then went on to see how well these compared price wise.  Quite well as it turned out!  Now I’m no jeweller so I had to compare on simple specification alone, but these Tesco rings seemed to be somewhat cheaper when compared to their high street rivals. Read More »