Picture
a rustic wedding in a verdant California park, the nervous couple about
to walk the aisle. Now, picture a firefighter rushing in and telling
everyone to immediately evacuate because of a wildfire.
Fans
of the ABC comedy series “Modern Family” will recognize the scene from
this season’s two-part finale. But weddings and wildfires are not just a
made-for-TV combination.
On
June 7, only two weeks after that episode was shown, Michael Wolber
waited at Rock Springs Ranch in Bend, Ore., for his bride, April
Hartley. She and her father were about to walk down the hillside when
fire trucks rushed in with sirens blaring. A wildfire that ended up
destroying more than 6,900 acres was quickly approaching, and though of
lesser significance, six months of wedding preparations were about to
potentially go up in smoke, literally.
“I’ve
never been evacuated before, and I’ve never been married before,” said
the now Ms. Wolber, 33. “I was having trouble deciding which I should be
more nervous and panicked about.”
While
most wedding planning is devoted to creating a perfect day, things can
go wrong — sometimes, terribly wrong. And while you can’t ensure a happy
marriage, you can insure a wedding.
For
more than 20 years, the Firemen’s Fund Insurance Company, part of
Allianz, has been underwriting wedding insurance through Robert V.
Nuccio, an insurance broker in Toluca Lake, Calif., and the owner of
Wedsure. Over those two decades, Mr. Nuccio’s firm has gone from being
the only company in the United States offering special-event policies to
being one of several, including units of Travelers, Aon and USAA. As it
turned out, the Wolbers were insured by Wedsure, but more on that
later.
Policies
differ, but wedding-insurance plans protect against situations like
extreme weather or a missing caterer. Plans are secured by couples to
protect most anything that would prevent them, their parents or the
majority of their guests from attending the wedding as planned.
One
caveat is that most insurance companies require such a policy to be
bought at least 14 days ahead to cover weather-related events. In other
words, calling for insurance while Hurricane Sandy was barreling up the East Coast wouldn’t have worked.
When
Mr. Nuccio started offering wedding insurance, he said, an average
wedding cost between $14,000 and $15,000. It is now close to $30,000.
“To a guy who makes $50,000 a year, $30,000 is a lot of money,” Mr.
Nuccio said. “When you can’t afford to put on the same event twice,
that’s when you buy wedding insurance.”
That
motivated Josh Rosenberg, 31, to purchase wedding insurance with
Travelers last July. He had witnessed friends lose their deposits after
Hurricane Irene forced them to postpone their wedding and was concerned
that a snowstorm could interfere with his wedding plans this December.
“I was Googling how to protect myself,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “I didn’t
even know wedding insurance existed.”
As
it turned out, he had more than blizzards to fear. In May, his wedding
site, the reBar restaurant in Brooklyn, went bankrupt, and the owner was
charged with grand larceny and tax evasion.
Mr.
Rosenberg and his fiancée, Kristina Martin, 31, were shocked and
anguished. But one week later they received a check from Travelers for a
little more than $13,000. “Every penny we gave to reBar we got back,”
he said.
Julie
Villar, 27, was not so lucky. Her wedding was only two weeks away when
reBar closed, and though she managed to find another location, she and
her husband, Chris Gardner, 29, didn’t have insurance and lost the
$20,000 they had paid reBar.
But
Leslie Price, a New York wedding planner and the owner of In Any Event,
doesn’t recommend wedding insurance for most of her clients, preferring
a simpler form of protection. “For every contract that I have my
couples sign, I have my vendors add a postponement clause,” Ms. Price
said, explaining that the clause allows for a one-year postponement if
the event needs to be canceled because of illness, accident, acts of
terrorism or acts of nature, “or for any reason beyond client’s
control.”
Ms.
Price’s method requires less effort for her clients and has the added
benefit of being free, which was the advantage that was also stressed by
Joyce Scardina Becker, an owner of Events of Distinction in San
Francisco, who inserts a similar clause into contracts with service
providers.
Yet
insurance offers greater reimbursement, and the cost is relatively
small. It can be as little as $125 for $10,000 of coverage, and roughly
$600 for $100,000 of coverage.
But
that’s just cancellation insurance. There is also liability insurance,
which many wedding spaces now require. With more weddings taking place
at private estates and alternative event spaces, couples often must
provide a certificate of liability insurance, making them responsible
for any property damage or bodily injury that takes place during their
wedding, or after the wedding if it was caused by the actions of an
intoxicated guest who was served alcohol at the event.
“We’ve
become a litigious society,” Ms. Scardina Becker said. “One moment you
think you’re inviting a friend to your wedding, and the next moment
you’re being subpoenaed for a lawsuit.”
Rock
Springs Ranch is one place that requires liability coverage, which is
why the Wolbers, the Oregon couple, had purchased a policy from Wedsure
(that included cancellation coverage).
That
didn’t make the prospect of being evacuated any more palatable, and the
couple remain grateful that the firefighters gave them a 15-minute
reprieve to have an abbreviated marriage ceremony.
“There
was a huge weight off both of our shoulders when we realized we could
get married in this place we picked,” said Mr. Wolber, 25.
But
instead of lingering among their guests for a relaxed and elegant
reception, they immediately vacated the premises with their
photographer, Josh Newton, who took the shooting flames and billowing
smoke in stride, since he had photographed weddings for 10 years and has
dealt with mishaps big and — well, there is no small. “When anything
goes wrong at a wedding,” he explained with a laugh, “it feels like a
natural disaster.”
He
drove the couple to a secure location to take pictures, and the
resulting photos of the couple embracing before a fiery sky became an
Internet phenomenon after Mr. Newton posted them online the next day.
The
Wolbers became the symbols for a wedding gone wrong. But when they
contacted Wedsure, they were told that their insurance did not cover the
evacuation of their reception.
“The
policy says we cover the nonrefundable expenses you have incurred if
it’s canceled, but it wasn’t canceled,” Mr. Nuccio said. “They needed to
cancel the wedding reception.”
After
the ceremony, the Wolbers did meet with their guests in a public park
in Bend, where they sat on the ground and ate salvaged food on paper
plates, while their rented tables and stemware remained in a
smoke-infused lodge.
Mr.
Nuccio, before knowing the Wolbers were actually clients of Wedsure,
was asked by a reporter about their particular situation since their
photographs had gone viral. He suggested then that the Wolbers’
experience exemplified the benefits of wedding insurance. “Even though
the wedding took place, the reception was spoiled,” he said.
But
Mr. Nuccio, in a later interview, pointed out that the Wedsure contract
defines cancellation as a private event being terminated “in its
entirety.” The contract also defines a “private event” as something
taking place at a specific “date and place,” and the public park was
definitely not the location specified in their contract. Mr. Nuccio did
not respond to questions about this seeming contradiction, nor did a
representative from Fireman’s Fund Insurance.
Some
may consider being removed from one’s wedding as synonymous with
cancellation. “If insurance doesn’t help with that extreme of a
circumstance, it’s hard to recommend,” Mr. Wolber said.
Travelers
has similar language in its wedding-insurance contract, but Ed
Charlebois, the vice president for specialty-lines product management,
suggested that Travelers might interpret it differently.
He
emphasized that each claim is unique, but he also said that “if you had
your ceremony but were not able to have the reception where you planned
to have it, that’s something I think that would be covered.”
Janet
Ruiz, the media relations manager for Fireman’s Fund, said: “We take
customer satisfaction seriously at Fireman’s Fund. We are reaching out
to Mr. and Mrs. Wolber to resolve any questions they may have regarding
their wedding insurance.”
So, is wedding insurance just one more thing that can go wrong with a wedding?
Jolene Rae Harrington, an editor of “Here Comes the Guide,” a bridal resource, remains cautiously in favor of coverage.
“The
bigger your budget, the more sense it makes to get insurance,” she
said. “We always suggest you review all fine print on the wedding
contracts, and make sure you do the same with your insurance.”
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