Author Topic: Wedding insurance, are you serious?  (Read 6463 times)

windawake

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Frankies Girl

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2014, 01:53:22 PM »
I saw that, and the first thing I thought of was if it cost enough to worry about insurance, you're spending too much.

People can be so very stupid.


scarab007

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2014, 02:25:22 PM »
I would not say it's a stupid idea as you never know what can happen.  Wedding cost aside, as everyone on here pretty much would get married at city hall, but seems like a way to get piece of mind.

I would not flame this idea to hard.

jefffff

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2014, 02:33:55 PM »
While having an expensive wedding is unappealing to me, it still seems prudent to use statistics to figure out the rate that weddings are called off, adjust for the specific conditions of your wedding, and buy insurance if the expected "loss" is greater than the cost of the insurance. If your wedding has a 10% chance of being called off then spending $500 to insure your $50,000 wedding is prudent, as would spending $5 to insure your $500 wedding.

So uhh, what does this cover? If I book a destination wedding in hawaii, buy plane tickets for me and my fiance, and I fly to hawaii and my fiance "decides not to show" doesn't, do I get the cost of both tickets reimbursed with a free trip to Hawaii to boot? Obviously I don't condone insurance fraud but that seems awfully game-able if that is how it works.

KS

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2014, 03:34:48 PM »
This sounds a little different, but our wedding venue required us to get a certain level of outside insurance to cover potential damage and so they didn't have to cover liability if a guest was injured, etc. (I got married before finding this site, but nobody spent beyond their means and everyone had a fantastic time so at this point there are no regrets about what we did spend.) I remember being a little peeved at the unexpected expense since I was pretty sure none of our guests were the type to sue if they tripped and fell or something, but with some research on our part it didn't end up being that big a cost in the scheme of things and was nice peace of mind.

Don't think the kind of insurance described here would've been worthwhile for me, but like johlstei says there could be cases where it makes sense, although probably if you can't afford to eat the cost of the wedding in the event of a problem, you're likely spending more than you should be on it. (And if you're worried about the groom not showing up, maybe spend the money on counseling to find out if you should be getting married rather than insurance!)

senecando

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2014, 03:38:34 PM »
While having an expensive wedding is unappealing to me, it still seems prudent to use statistics to figure out the rate that weddings are called off, adjust for the specific conditions of your wedding, and buy insurance if the expected "loss" is greater than the cost of the insurance. If your wedding has a 10% chance of being called off then spending $500 to insure your $50,000 wedding is prudent, as would spending $5 to insure your $500 wedding.

Seems like the insurance company will probably be better at this than we are.

jefffff

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2014, 03:52:15 PM »
While having an expensive wedding is unappealing to me, it still seems prudent to use statistics to figure out the rate that weddings are called off, adjust for the specific conditions of your wedding, and buy insurance if the expected "loss" is greater than the cost of the insurance. If your wedding has a 10% chance of being called off then spending $500 to insure your $50,000 wedding is prudent, as would spending $5 to insure your $500 wedding.

Seems like the insurance company will probably be better at this than we are.
That's not really a good reason to skip the analysis to see if they are right. You certainly have more information about the human factors involved, though it's probably easy to be blindered in how likely a partner is to call off a wedding. Obviously how the insurance works affects how likely this is to work, do I get all my money back if it turns out my bride's father can't make it on that date?

You could make an identical argument against insuring one's own car as well, is something different there or have you chosen to do that(assuming you have a car)?

If this objection were the main reason the thread existed then it should have been entitled "homeowners insurance, are you serious?" since that is probably much more common.

senecando

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2014, 08:59:01 AM »
johlstei: Fair enough re: personal factors asymmetrical info, etc.

As for car insurance, I have liability insurance because a) it's required by law and b) there are cases where I wouldn't be able to pay for all the damage I caused. I do not have collision insurance because if my car is totaled I can cover that without seriously getting screwed.

So my thinking is that, on the whole, insurance is going to beat us--that's why they still exist. It makes sense to take on that risk when you can, unless the worst result would actually be catastrophic: a falling tree demolishing half of your house which you don't even own yet, you drive into someone's house and demolish half of it, you need a very expensive medical procedure.

So maybe I should have just plus-one'd KS when s/he said:

> if you can't afford to eat the cost of the wedding in the event of a problem, you're likely spending more than you should be on it.

galliver

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #8 on: January 22, 2014, 09:34:25 AM »
If I'm willing to spend $500 on a computer, I'm willing to spend that money to get something of value back; doesn't mean I can just tolerate the loss of money without gaining the objective. I also have low risk tolerance, personally, so I get the extra year or two of warranty on that computer for $50 because I like knowing that while it's not quite obsolete, yet, I can get any part of it replaced and it won't cost me half the value of the computer plus my time figuring out how to do it.

So I can totally understand how someone who is spending any significant money on a wedding (and with a large family and/or a culture of larger-wedding traditions) even if it's just $5k or $10k, would be willing to drop $100 to make sure that if there is a family tragedy or a weather event (you can't predict these things a year in advance when  you have to book the venue, if you need one!) they can keep their money and hold the wedding another day, instead of losing it and getting nothing. Even if it is generally a financial loss, it is a relatively small one for a lot of psychological benefit, i.e. peace of mind.

Quark

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2014, 12:23:17 PM »
I would not say it's a stupid idea as you never know what can happen.  Wedding cost aside, as everyone on here pretty much would get married at city hall, but seems like a way to get piece of mind.

I would not flame this idea to hard.

Where can I find these mind pieces you speak of?

CommonCents

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2014, 12:29:53 PM »
This sounds a little different, but our wedding venue required us to get a certain level of outside insurance to cover potential damage and so they didn't have to cover liability if a guest was injured, etc. (I got married before finding this site, but nobody spent beyond their means and everyone had a fantastic time so at this point there are no regrets about what we did spend.) I remember being a little peeved at the unexpected expense since I was pretty sure none of our guests were the type to sue if they tripped and fell or something, but with some research on our part it didn't end up being that big a cost in the scheme of things and was nice peace of mind.

Don't think the kind of insurance described here would've been worthwhile for me, but like johlstei says there could be cases where it makes sense, although probably if you can't afford to eat the cost of the wedding in the event of a problem, you're likely spending more than you should be on it. (And if you're worried about the groom not showing up, maybe spend the money on counseling to find out if you should be getting married rather than insurance!)

Same.  Our ceremony location (my college campus) required liability insurance.  It was the same price for the event v. the entire weekend, so we got it for the entire time.  We also discovered in the process that if someone is injured on your property when they've been drinking, homeowners insurance generally does not kick in (and USAA definitely does not).  So it ended up being a good thing, to protect my parents, as we held a bbq after the wedding rehearsal at my parent's house where we served alcohol to all 95 wedding guests. 

swampwiz

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #11 on: January 25, 2014, 03:55:44 AM »
$50K on a wedding?  That kind of cash as a nest egg could provide $400/mo or so of income in perpetuity!

Kaminoge

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #12 on: January 25, 2014, 06:16:56 AM »
While having an expensive wedding is unappealing to me, it still seems prudent to use statistics to figure out the rate that weddings are called off, adjust for the specific conditions of your wedding, and buy insurance if the expected "loss" is greater than the cost of the insurance. If your wedding has a 10% chance of being called off then spending $500 to insure your $50,000 wedding is prudent, as would spending $5 to insure your $500 wedding.

So uhh, what does this cover? If I book a destination wedding in hawaii, buy plane tickets for me and my fiance, and I fly to hawaii and my fiance "decides not to show" doesn't, do I get the cost of both tickets reimbursed with a free trip to Hawaii to boot? Obviously I don't condone insurance fraud but that seems awfully game-able if that is how it works.

With regards to the first paragraph it doesn't really make sense to do calculations like that. Just because only 10% of weddings end in fist fights doesn't mean my (totally imaginary) wedding will have a 10% chance of a fist fight. It probably depends somewhat on whether I decide only to invite my Amish friends or go all out and invite 100 of my best Hell's Angel buddies to come to an open bar. If you figure your own wedding has a 10% chance of being called off I'd like to suggest you're making a big mistake sending out the invites.

As to your second paragraph anyone want to get married in Hawaii? I'm up for a trip...

SwordGuy

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #13 on: January 25, 2014, 06:22:25 AM »
A friend of  mine got to stand up in front of the guests at a $56,000 wedding and say, "Thank you all for coming.  There will not be a wedding today."  The groom got cold feet.

Now, I think $56,000 wedding is a huge waste of money, but a few hundred dollars for insurance that covered the groom backing out would have made the bride's parents one hell of a lot of happy that day.


MrsPete

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Re: Wedding insurance, are you serious?
« Reply #14 on: January 25, 2014, 06:35:27 PM »
I saw that, and the first thing I thought of was if it cost enough to worry about insurance, you're spending too much.

People can be so very stupid.
My first thought was that you'd better be sure that both parties genuinely want to be married before you spend a dime.