TEXT B Paris: Thanks to a French
insurance company, brides and bridegrooms with cold feet no longer face
financial disaster from a canceled wedding. For a small premium, they can take
out a policy protecting them from love gone away or anything else that threatens
to rain on their big day. Despite France’s economic woes, the
amount of money spent on weddings is rising 5-10 per cent a year. And people in
the Paris region now dish out an average of 60,000 francs on tying the knot. But
life is unpredictable and non-refundable, so French insurers have stepped in to
ease the risk, finding their own little niche in the business of love. They join
colleagues in Britain, where insurers say wedding cancellation policies have
been around for about a decade. About 5 per cent of insured
weddings there never make it to the altar. Indeed, better safe than sorry.
"Obviously there are some who are superstitious, but in general people like the
idea," said Jacqueline Loeb, head of a Parisian insurance company.
In the past six weeks, she has sold 15 policies at a premium of about 3
per cent of the amount a client wants to be insured for. These
careful customers, she said, have included a man who was worded his fiancee
would have an allergic attack on her wedding day and a woman whose future
mother-in-law was gravely ill. The policy covers those and other
nuptial impediments: an accident that forces a cancellation of a Wedding, an
unexpected change of venue for the reception, damage caused at it, and even
honeymoons that don’t happen. As for the ultimate deal-breaker, cold feet, they
are also insured-but only until eight days before the ceremony. British
insurers, however, said they wouldn’t touch that clause with a stick. Steve
Warner, sales director of Insure Expo-Sure in London, says the six policies he
sells each week in the wedding season protect against things like damaged
wedding dresses, illness and death, but not changes of heart." Disinclination to
marry is not covered," he said. Ms Loed, who says hers is the only French agency
offering wedding policies, said she started the service last December.
A chateau outside Paris that hosts receptions was taking a beating from
last-minute cancellations, and approached Ms Loed to see if there wash’ t some
way of protecting itself. She obliged, then started advertising with caterers
and wedding departments in large department stores, and the idea has taken off
nicely. "We respond to a need," she said. The cost for people in the Paris region on weddings last year was probably______.