Wedding Blog

It’s the VENDORS only that need the insurance or YOU as well?

1) If YOU, I agree w/ farmgal above. If you don’t own a home, ask your family if you can use their homeowners’ insurance policy to get the cheap tack-on rider? I don’t know how to do this efficiently without a base homeowners insurance policy, though.

2) If the VENDORS, that is a contractual arrangement between the venue and the vendors. Ideally, the venue should have some form that the vendors fill out to certify that they have insurance. Be careful that YOU are not the one signing to guarantee that your VENDORS have insurance — how would you know if their premiums are current and what levels of insurance they have? The vendors should have to sign, not you. But if there is no form to make it a direct venue/vendor contract, you can make sure the minimum dollar amount of insurance coverage is written into your agreement with each vendor, and get them to counter-sign besides this add-on, and KEEP AN ORIGINAL OF THEIR SIGNATURES.

I know our venue requires proof of insurance as well. We are talking to our agent who handles our home owners insurance. But this is a great questions. If we didn’t just purchase a home I wouldn’t know what to do about it.

Our venue requires our vendors to have insurance…all of the vendors I’ve met w/ have insurance..I think it becomes an issue when you use a vendor that works at home (ie- a talented florist that does weddings on the side, a cousin’s friend who does dj-ing for fun, etc) My venue said that all vendors must have an insurance policy OR they would have to sign a liability release - which makes that said vendor responsible for all damages/issues/accidents.

Yes. Your vendors should have general liability insurance.

The proof of this is available by requesting a certificate of insurance from their insurance carrier.

This should not be difficult for the vendor to produce as it’s something they ought to have on hand or can easily obtain from their insurance broker.

But yes, if they don’t have it - you should ask your venue if they have some sort of waiver for your vendor to sign because I am sure venues run into that issue all the time.

And, your venue ought to have their own insurance as well.

i ran into this problem with my wedding coordinator. it was a big nightmare, but here’s what i discovered. my wedding coordinator (independent 3rd party, not affiliated with the venue) is planning the event, so her company is responsible for having insurance. she has the relationship with the venue and all the vendors. mostly they are vendors that she works with regularly, and she covers them under her company’s insurance policy. but when i chose a photographer that wasn’t one of her recommended guys, she hit me with the insurance issue saying that my photographer would have to provide proof of $1M liability insurance. what?! a photographer doesn’t carry liability insurance! i called my photographer and she said that she’d never heard of such a thing. she’s photographed 100s of weddings and has never been asked to provide proof of insurance of sign a waiver. i called the venue and they denied having such a policy. i felt like it was a scam to force me into using her recommended vendors. i was so upset that i almost fired my wedding coordinator.

Our vendor required 2 million if we serve alcohol, but said some bartenders already carry it. We were thinking of serving our own to save money…

wedsafe quoted us $250, but wants it served by a licensed bartender… so I guess we might as well just go ahead and find a bartender from a caterer with liability insurance, but, I’m still planning on doing some hard math to figure out what the better deal is.