As the spring and warmer weather slowly approaches, that means one thing for some businesses. Wedding and event season is almost here. With so many Oklahoma wedding venues and event halls being on large plots of land, it can often be confusing and difficult to find an insurance carrier that is willing to cover you for everything that you need.
In order to make your process easy, here are the top things to insure your Oklahoma wedding business against.
WIND & HAIL
If you haven’t heard, Oklahoma has a minor wind and hail problem and oftentimes your insurance policy will reflect that. With wedding spaces or event venues, these are often big buildings able to fit large amounts of people. In order to insure against wind and hail the insurance companies are going to want to know specifics about the roof. Is it metal, slate, or other composition? When was the last time it was replaced? Is the roof still in good shape?
Whatever you do, make sure your roof is insured be replaced at Replacement Cost and not Actual Cash Value- this could be the difference in your getting a couple thousand dollars vs 10s of thousands for replacement. Curious what this means- click here to find out.
If you have a metal roof in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and sometimes Arkansas many insurance companies are going to include an interesting exclusion to coverage. They will not pay to fix the roof if it is only cosmetic—that just means if the integrity of the roof is intact then they won’t pay to fix it because its dented and ugly. For metal roofs, the hail dents (or wind damage) will need to include damage on the seams.
For commercial buildings such as these, the days of flat deductibles are gone. There are times you can find a rare unicorn insurance company, but this often changes after a few years of them being hit with losses. Expect a 1%, 2%, 3% or even sometimes 4% wind hail deductible. This means that whatever number the insurance company values the building at, the percentage of that number is your wind/hail deductible.
BUILDNG AND OTHER PROPERTY COVERAGE
Insurance companies know that there’s usually there’s multiple buildings in a wedding space. It’s important to discuss with you agent the types of coverages that are important to you…especially if you have a venue with large acreage. If you have an old barn that was built in the 20s and you don’t want to replace it if something happens, discuss options with you agent. A good agent will customize the policy to fit your needs.
For building coverage, insurance companies will need to know things like square footage, any updates to electric, plumbing or hvac. They’ll also be interested to knowing whether there’s central station fire alarms and/or security alarms. These things will often reduce the rate which is a good thing. Make sure to tell your agent if there are sprinklers so that they can insure against sprinkler leakage.
Make sure you mention things like sheds, fencing, or horse stalls to your agent so they can discuss a plan for you. These are things that aren’t always automatically included.
LIABILITY
With large amounts of people constantly wandering around your property, this can often lead to people having accidents. Whether it’s a trip and fall or something else, liability insurance is what protects you again general accidents that the business may be responsible for.
LIQUOR LIABILITY/ HOST LIQUOR
Protecting your business from accidents surrounding alcohol is hugely important. These are often the largest claims we see. While many venues don’t hire the bartender, if there is an accident because of alcohol you can just about guarantee that anyone involved will be pulled into it, including the venue. If you are not responsible for serving the alcohol but are still hosting the space in which it happened, make sure the insurance policy has host liquor liability. If the venue serves the alcohol, you will need liquor liability and probably an umbrella as well.
PROFESSIONAL COVERAGE
Depending how you run the business you may or may not need professional coverage. If you have any part in helping plan, prepare, or put together the wedding then we would highly suggest professional. We’ve all heard of the phrase “bridezilla” and if someone doesn’t show up, something goes wrong, or plans don’t go just right we often see this result in a claim. Even if you don’t do that, professional accidents happen all the time for venues like double booking a date without realizing it. With the crazy and lawyer happy world we live in, professional is crucial for an event venue.
While you’re helping put on the best day of so many people’s life, it’s important that you have the right coverage to protect everyday life for your business. At ECI, we specialize in wedding and event spaces in Oklahoma, Texas, and surrounding states. Let us help you make it easy.
Written by: Avery Moore
Read more Blog posts by Avery Moore
