Features and Benefits

Are you planning to head overseas or interstate for your big day? Maybe to Hawaii, Fiji, Bali or Las Vegas? Take out travel insurance to cover the trip to and from your wedding.

With the average Australian wedding costing around $50,000, couples are increasingly taking out insurance to help give them peace of mind on the big day.

• We can't cover you if you change your mind about your partner, but we can cover you for some things.
• As well as unlimited overseas emergency medical and hospital coverage we provide coverage for a wide range of things, such as luggage and personal effects and delay expenses. If you have any extra high value items you wish to be covered then we can provide coverage for these items up to a total of $5000.
• Ensure you always have original receipts for high value items and that you report anything lost or stolen within 24 hours to the police and obtain a report. Always make sure that you don't leave your items unattended or out of reach.

What's Covered With Comprehensive Insurance?

• Your Belongings. You're most likely to have at least a mobile phone and a laptop to keep you connected, we cover your stuff if it's lost, stolen or damaged.*
• Medical Expenses. Medical claims are the most common and come at the highest cost, we cover unlimited overseas medical expenses.*
• Activities Covered. We cover a multitude of activities, including water rafting, moped riding, and bungee jumping.*

*Terms and conditions, limits and exclusions apply. please see PDS for full details. 

What's Not Covered With Comprehensive Insurance?

• Drugs & Alcohol. If you're intoxicated, taking drugs (that haven't been prescribed) and your claim results from these actions, then you're not covered.e

• Unsupervised Belongings. Leaving your things laying around is just asking for someone to take them so if you leave anything unattended or unsupervised, we won't cover this.
• Ignoring Official Warnings. If a government or other official body have issued a specific "Do Not Travel" or "Reconsider Your Need to Travel" warning and you go anyway, we won't cover any claim you make relating to this.
• Breaking The Law. For obvious reasons we can't help you out here. Always adhere to local laws.

For a full list of what's not covered please refer to the PDS.

10 Tips For Hosting The Perfect Destination Wedding

1 Don’t go too far

OK, you want somewhere exotic. But if you’re based in Australia and announce that you’re getting married in Cuba, you can be pretty well assured that the wedding party will be made up of your immediate family only. And even they will be grumbling about the expense. Destination weddings are indulgent by their very nature, but you don’t want to completely price people out of being able to attend.

2 Have everyone stay in the one place

The really great thing about a destination wedding is that you get a long, multi-day celebration with everyone you love. Friends bond. Worlds collide. And the best way to enjoy that is to ensure you pick a venue big enough for everyone to stay. If you have guests scattered among different hotels you’ll spend as much time ringing around trying to find everyone as you do actually enjoying yourself with them. 

3 Remember: it’s not all about you

Yes, weddings are technically supposed to be all about you, but if you have a destination wedding you have to understand that people are spending a lot of money to be there, and their happiness deserves to be considered as well. That means planning things with your guests in mind. Are they involved in the activities? Do they have something to do each day? Are they aware of where to be and what they should be doing? These are things you’ll need to think about.

4 Use a local wedding planner

Staging a successful destination wedding is going to require you to put a huge amount of trust in someone else. You can’t organise this whole thing from home on your own – it’s just not possible. The trick is to find a local wedding planner you think you can trust to coordinate the whole event, to deal with local organisers and venues, and to iron out the little kinks that will inevitably come up. Those things are very difficult to sort out from another country.

5 Go with a popular destination

It’s probably tempting to be different and to host your wedding in, say, the Soloman Islands, or some unknown place in Indonesia. The trouble is, however, that the infrastructure for an event like that just isn’t there. There are no wedding planners, no photographers, no florists – not even any venues used to putting on large events. If you really want to go with an option like this it could be great fun flying by the seat of your pants. But if you want to ensure nothing goes wrong, opt for a popular destination like Fiji or Bali or even Vietnam.

6 Check the seasons

Don’t simply assume that because you’re booking your wedding on a tropical island that the weather will be amazing. It might be rainy season. It might be extremely humid. It might even be cold. Make sure you get this right.

7 Visit the venue beforehand

This one is essential. You only have the slimmest of chance of getting everything right if you don’t visit your wedding venue beforehand. Make it a holiday for you and your partner – travel there a few months ahead just to check everything out. This will be invaluable as you meet all of the people who will be involved in the wedding, discuss face-to-face what you expect of them, and to see the actual spots where everything will be taking place. This whole exercise might be costly, but it will be worth it.

8 Relax

The great thing about a destination wedding is that you’re forced to leave much of the organisation to someone else. Your choice, therefore, is to constantly worry about what that someone else is doing, or to just relax and go with the flow. We would recommend the latter.

9 Understand that some people won’t make it

You’re getting married in some far-off land. You’re asking friends and family to take time off work and travel at their own expense to join you in that far-off land. Don’t be offended if some people aren’t able to do that – even if they’re people you consider close friends. Destination weddings are a big demand on everyone involved, and it shouldn’t be taken as a personal sleight if some people can’t commit to it.

10 Book early

The golden rule of destination weddings. Because you’re not the only couple with this idea. In fact pretty much everyone else is thinking the exact same thing, which is why if you want the best venue in the best destination, you have to book… Now!

Further Reading