When planning your event to-do list don’t forget insurance

Don’t let your businesses’ legal security take a back seat to planning your clients’ “special days.” 

As the summer wedding season gets into full swing, event planners have calendars booked solid with tastings, venue visits and bride-hand-holding. To avoid having a wedding horror story, most wedding planners from New York to California are managing multiple event plans and making lists that will be checked many times over.

With the level of detail planners need to orchestrate so many moving parts it’s surprising that more wedding planners don’t carry a general liability insurance policy or professional liability insurance.  While insurers consider many events low-risk affairs – making event planner insurance reasonably priced – problems occur, even for highly experienced planners.  If something goes wrong at a wedding you've planned your client could sue for planner's negligence and emotional distress, even if the incident was not your fault.

That’s where professional liability insurance comes in.  Also known as errors and omissions (E&O), this policy responds to mistakes that could lead to breach-of-contract or non-performance lawsuits.  Your client could complain that you secured the venue for the wrong date, or that their guests were served too slowly.  Whether you did or didn’t, whether they were or weren't, you need protection and the resources to defend yourself.

General liability insurance is also important, as it protects you if an accident harms anyone at a wedding you've planned.  It’s possible that a guest will trip over a tent stake, breaking his ankle in the fall, or the groom’s uncle will back into a light pole in the parking lot and blame you for not warning him it was there.  General liability will protect you in these two and myriad other unpredictable situations.

So, while you’re busy planning this summer’s dream weddings be sure to take time for your own dreams by protecting your business with event planner insurance.