Military Wedding Insurance Technicality Crisis!

Hi Katie,

2 thoughts:

1) you need insurance that is better than usual wedding insurance, approach bigger insurers and ask for a bespoke quote. It will cost more though. Your usual wedding insurers are probably not going to be much help.

2) Military weddings I have seen have been planned for a window and then organised fairly last minute using a military venue/catering to ensure it all goes ahead, have you spoken to anyone about this? I don't fully know your situation but I do known of a few barracks that are very beautiful, and the officers mess means a very resonably priced bar! Obviously if you have your heart set on somewhere then this is no help.

Good luck, hope you find a solution x

My partner was in the military and we had a few friends who had the same issue. I don't think many people have been successful finding insurance as even their life insurance for a mortgage etc are restricted due to their job. My only advise would be move the wedding date if your unsure on his deployment dates. My experience were the army were as useful as a chocolate tea pot with dates and sticking to them so I would eliminate the risk and move the wedding to the next year as my partner went every two years and I think that's standard for most regiments but may be worth checking with your oh as mine left two years ago. It sucks no one will insure but I can see their point of view with the risks of deployment in the last few years. Also how would you feel if it was cancelled with a few weeks or months notice and the. Had to re-arrange. In my experience the benefits of delaying outway the risks of cancelling. I wish your oh all the best and a lot of luck if his deployed. Tell him to keep his head down and chin up!

It may be difficult to solve the insurance issue. Have you tried all the usual suppliers like E&L, John Lewis, Debenhams etc?

Another way of minimising losses would be to negotiate special terms with suppliers, eg that you can move your date at short notice.

I've photographed a few military weddings and one was re-scheduled at just 6 weeks notice. Fortunately all the suppliers were happy to switch the date. The army just changed the grooms deployment dates! They said he could still have 24 hours off to get married, but none of his mates could have leave for it. So they would have had loads of guests missing if they had gone ahead with the original date.

The other obvious solution is to bring the wedding forward to late December 2015!

Hi there, thank you for your ideas-I have tried specialist military wedding insurers and even they won't insure us! We have already booked our venue in my home county as we are based in the north but neither us are from there it would be really far for our guests to travel to camp.

Not a chance we could organise it within a month either as he is away until the middle of December anyway

Thank you for the advice though!

Katie x

My H2B is in the army and is currently in Afghanistan. I got our insurance through John Lewis and they're covering us for deployment. But I don't know how the whole "high readiness" thing would affect that. It's worth calling the bigger insurance companies and paying a bit more.

How far through your wedding preparations are you? Surely it's a huge risk to book your wedding for the August. Why not wait til the September or October? You'll feel so awful if you have to cancel last minute and in my experience of the armed forces they'll mess you around as much as they possibly can when it comes to dates and working around you!

x