My good friend Samantha Darr from soireebliss! called me to chat last night and told me about a very sad situation that some of her couples are facing in Houston. Apparently, their wedding / reception venue has shut down over night and the owners are nowhere to be found. They’ve taken off with couples’ deposits and full payments. I can only imagine how utterly devastated these couples must be to have lost not only their entire wedding, but their investment in that wedding. Prior to the venue shutting down, they ran a promotion where if couples paid in full, they received 20% off the total event price. Some people signed contracts as little as a few days prior to the venue locking its doors. The venue was also an “all inclusive” kind of venue, where the pastry chef, florist, DJ, and photographer were part of the package and subcontracted through the venue itself. The vendors haven’t been paid either and know nothing of being contracted to work for these couples on their wedding day. So these couples literally have no wedding at all. There are couples with weddings schedule to be this weekend and there is nothing that can be done. It really is a very upsetting situation and I wish there was something I could do to help the couples who are suffering over this. You can view the local news story about it here.

In my experience this is uncommon, but I wanted to share it with our readers because there is a moral here. Wedding Insurance is something that I recommend to all my couples from a liability standpoint and in case something like this happens. When you make investments you always insure them – your home, car, business, the diamond engagement ring you’re wearing. All of those are costly investments that you want to protect. You should think about your wedding day in the same way and spend the extra $200-$800 (depending on the size of your coverage) to insure your wedding and have peace of mind. I cannot stress this enough and I really encourage all of you to do some research on wedding insurance companies, like WedSafe, and consider making the investment. When you have $30K — $100K invested in an event you want to make sure that you are protected in case something goes wrong.

To all our vendors who read, please consider donating some of your services in some capacity to these couples. Many have of course spent their life savings and now they have absolutely nothing to show for it.