Getting Married? insure it

The big fat Indian Wedding often sees a family spending a large part of its life savings to make the event memorable. A normal Indian wedding may only span a few days. But it takes months of preparation and planning. Indian weddings are a series of events. Each event requires time and lots of money. A small mistake, an accident, or a mishap can put the whole event at risk. A cancellation or postponement of the wedding may cause severe losses, which may be difficult to absorb for the family.

Enter wedding insurance?
To protect against such risks to the wedding, several insurance companies in India offer wedding insurance policies. In a situation such as wedding cancellation or postponement, or a financial loss due to an accident, and other such contingencies which may financially trouble the wedding parties, a wedding insurance helps.

What is covered?
The list of inclusions in a wedding insurance policy may vary from one insurance company to another. However, there are a host of features common to most.

A typical policy will cover losses incurred during a marriage such as booking of the marriage hall, decorations, catering services, food, hotel booking or guest house charges, videography, music or DJ fees, florist charges, transportation cost, and train/flight ticket booking cost.

There is also protection against burglary, theft, robbery, fire, postponement, cancellation, bodily injury, damage to property or decoration, and death. Some risks such as losses due to rain or storm may be provided under special circumstances as decided by the insurer.

What’s not covered?
Weddings can be cancelled for man-made reasons. If the two parties, i.e. from the bride and groom's side, have a disagreement or dispute which causes delays, cancellations or damages, insurance will not help cover the losses.

Obvious risks, such as those from rain during the rainy season, may also not be covered. The insurance company may not provide coverage in a situation of civil unrest, terror attack, transportation breakdown, late reporting to the airport, intentional self-injury, Acts of God (which includes many events on which we don’t have control), earthquake, flood, storm, loss due to criminal acts by the insured party, losses due to intentional acts, normal wear and tear, depreciation of assets etc.

Some insurance companies may allow coverage against earthquake, storm or terror acts, but you need to confirm this.

Things to keep in mind
The premium of wedding insurance depends on such factors as the marriage location, cover size, period of cover, overall cost of the event. While buying a wedding cover, you must read the fine print in the policy document to understand the list of inclusions and exclusions, as these may vary significantly across insurance providers.

Properly document your wedding-related expenses and bills since you'll need to mention these in the insurance application. You may strike off things in the wedding insurance for which you have already taken insurance, such as insurance for theft of jewellery, property etc. and this would help you reduce your premium costs.

Wedding insurance can also allow third party coverage along with the normal cover. “Third party” is anyone apart from the insurer and the insured. If anybody you don’t know suffers losses or dies for a reason connected to the wedding, or suffers from food poisoning due to the wedding catering, you can be covered.

Should you take wedding insurance?
Considering the huge money involved, and the uncertainties and risks during the wedding period, you should consider taking a wedding insurance. This helps you be tension-free, as your financial losses would be covered. Earlier, high networth individuals used to buy wedding insurance due to the massive wedding budgets they played with.But now, it is getting the attention of all classes of people.

The writer is CEO of  BankBazaar.com