Wedding insurance and supplier contracts: the boring pages that save you
Nobody gets engaged to read terms and conditions. Read them anyway. The clauses, cover and questions that protect your day and your deposit.
The least romantic hour of wedding planning is the one that most deserves your attention. Contracts and insurance decide what happens when things go wrong, and things go wrong at a steady, unglamorous rate: suppliers cease trading, venues flood, photographers break wrists.
Wedding insurance, plainly
A standard policy covers supplier failure, cancellation for defined reasons such as serious illness or a venue closing, lost or damaged attire and rings, and public liability. Premiums are modest, typically £50 to £300 depending on the level of cover, against an average UK wedding spend well north of £20,000. Buy it early, ideally the week you pay your first deposit, because cover applies to what happens after purchase, not before. Read the definition of cancellation closely: a change of heart is never covered, and events you already knew about when buying rarely are.
The contract clauses that matter
Every serious supplier will hand you a contract without being asked. When it arrives, look for five things. What exactly is being delivered, in numbers: hours, images, staff, courses. The payment schedule, and how far your deposit travels if you cancel versus if they do. The illness and failure plan, meaning who replaces them and who pays. A force majeure clause that says what happens when neither side is at fault. And the change fee, because moving your date should have a known cost, not a negotiated one.
A supplier with no contract at all is not charmingly informal. They are asking you to hold all the risk.
Deposits and the card trick
Wherever possible, pay deposits by credit card. Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, purchases over £100 give you a claim against the card provider if a supplier fails, which has rescued thousands of couples from collapsed businesses. Bank transfer offers no such net.
The venue questions
Ask the venue who insures what. Their public liability covers their building; it does not cover your band knocking over a speaker onto a guest, which is why good venues ask suppliers for their own insurance certificates. If yours does, take it as a green flag.
One evening, two cups of tea, every contract read aloud between you. It is dull. It is also the cheapest peace of mind in the entire budget.
