The ABSOLUTE WORST Case Scenario | EVERY Wedding Couple Needs This

If I could convince you of nothing else here in my entire tenure on the internet of giving wedding planning advice, it would be, it would be what we're talking about in today's video.

Close your eyes. Hold your back.

No.

I mean, just imagine how helpless this hair makeup artist feels. I mean, not to mention the bride just being like, oh my gosh, you have no flowers, you have no flowers, and you're stuck in my chair and you can't even emote properly because you are surrounded by people and it's supposed to be the best day of your life, but you have no flowers because your florist didn't show up. No, I love it, it looks so good.

The white added, it looks so good.

The eyebrows, everything, I love it. Crystal, yay, you did such a good job. I needed, I needed to feel good today. Thank you.

I feel, I feel so much better. I, I I love it. Like, anybody get married yesterday, still have their wedding, can bring their flowers here. Beautiful. Uh, or anybody that got married yesterday can just bring their flowers here. Like, I would feel sick to my stomach because what recourse do you have? What do you have? What are you supposed to do? Obviously, in that last minute shuffle, as a planner, I'm driving to Trader Joe's, I'm calling people, I'm contacting florists, I'm running to the nearest grocery store trying to figure out what we can do to salvage this day because this is heartbreaking, but this goes so much further than just the emotional feel and the aesthetic of your wedding day. This is thousands of dollars gone with no recourse. Oh my gosh, good, she got some flowers and ended the night looking fabulous. But she's leaving her event going, what am I supposed to do now? Like, I can't call the person, they're not picking up, they're not answering. We have this contract we signed, they didn't fulfill their end of the bargain, and now I've inherited this headache that I have to pursue to figure out how I'm going to get my money back. Friend, I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. I wish I could tell you that this rarely happens. But let's be so for real, the wedding industry is not a regulated industry, much like many industries out there. I'm not isolating the wedding industry as a whole. I'm just calling a spade a spade in this scenario. And even the most extremely diligent couples that do all of the proper research, they read reviews, they see full galleries for photographers, they talk to past clients, they do everything right by the book, and they still find themselves in a scenario where a vendor does not fulfill their side of the bargain and they find themselves out thousands of dollars with absolutely no recourse. So today's video, we're going to be talking about cancellation insurance and why absolutely every single one of you needs to be getting this for your wedding because it covers scenarios just like this. And of course, shout out to Brightco for sponsoring today's video because if stuff hits the fan, Brightco has your back. But get this, the cancellation policy isn't just for if a vendor goes out of business or if they're a no-show.

I am getting married in 30 days and I no longer have a wedding dress or bridesmaid dresses. So when I bought my wedding dress, the salesgirl and I talked and I told her I didn't like this one feature on my dress and that I wasn't gonna buy it because of that. She told me it's perfectly fine, it's an easy fix, our seamstress here can even do it for you. I was like, okay, cool, beautiful, bought my dress. I go to my first alteration appointment and the seamstress is like, that's literally impossible to do to this dress. And I was like, what? She was like, I can't do that. I can do other stuff, but I can't do that. I'm like, okay. I go in for my second appointment. The lady had destroyed my dress. Like, destroyed. To the point where the shop owner was like, this is insane. We need to send it elsewhere to be repaired. So they send me elsewhere to get the dress repaired. After nearly 3 weeks of working with this person, it finally is like determined that this can't be done. Like, this dress is literally being reconstructed at this point. And we are a month out from the wedding. It's decided that I need to get a new wedding dress. That was literally this past weekend. Um, love that for me.

Most people in this scenario will go, well, guess I have to buy a new dress and there's nothing I can do about it. But did you know that Brightco has special attire coverage for damage or loss to your clothing? Yeah, I didn't even know that before making this video either. So if you find yourself in a scenario where the shop girl tells you to order a dress 'cause you can totally fix it, and then seamstress goes to take care of it and obliterates your dress, so it goes to a specialist and then the specialist obliterates your dress even further, you can go, that's okay, I've got coverage. No problem, no sweat. At least I'm going to see some of my money back for this scenario.

Yesterday I got a call from the shop owner who tells me, hey, sorry about everything, blah, blah, blah. At the end of our 10-minute convo, he goes, oh, by the way, by the way, your bridesmaid dresses aren't going to be here in time. Nope. That is unacceptable. We ordered them with plenty of time. I even paid for rush shipping because I wanted them here. He calls today. Good news: the dresses will be here in time. Wonderful. Bad news: his sales team ordered them in the wrong color. Not the wrong shade. Not like, oh, I asked you for light blue and you ordered dark blue. No, I asked for light blue and you ordered pink. Pink. And they can't do anything about it. They can't be here in time. The dresses take 8 weeks to make. Nothing they can do about it. So now I'm at Macy's, don't know if you can see that, and I'm gonna go try to find a bridesmaid dress. Oh, also, two of my bridesmaids are super pregnant, so we also need time to do alterations.

It's, it's this, it's stuff like this where even it's an established business and a mistake happens, right? Although this one, it feels like multiple mistakes happen. But what are you supposed to do in this scenario? What are you supposed to do when your wedding dress is ruined? So obviously the intent of this video is to get you to get cancellation insurance before anything like this happened. I'm gonna link them right here. They'll stay in the description box the entire time too. But after you have this coverage, in my professional opinion, you should be taking as many photos as possible. You should be getting as many screenshots as possible. So when push comes to shove, you have the receipts to back you up. But don't worry, there's more where that came from. Let's see, what have we covered so far? Florist, okay. Dress, okay. But what about when it's your photographer and they don't show up? What do you do then when it's thousands upon thousands of dollars for someone who's supposed to capture the the events of your special day, and they ghost you. They go out of business. They no-show.

I'm a 2024 bride and I need some advice because I think my fiancé and I might be getting scammed. We live in Chicago, but we're getting married in Minnesota because both our families are there. So we had to find a photographer in Minnesota. We find this photographer on Zola and she seems like she has a really great style. She's in our price range. We really like her. Of course we do our due diligence and we Google search her. We find her website, we make sure she has good reviews. She does have two itty-bitty red flags. The first one is that she has one really bad review. Basically, this guy is saying that she essentially ghosted him and his wife after their wedding when she didn't deliver their photos on time. The second red flag is that the galleries on her website say that they're under construction. Now, I'm not too worried about this because she has lots of photos on her homepage. She has lots of photos on her Instagram and on her Zola website. So we decide to meet with her over Zoom because hey, everyone gets a bad review every now and then. And the rest of the reviews are great. She's super nice, very professional. She lays everything out, explains the wedding package to us. We sign a contract, we pay her a $1,300 deposit, and a month later we go up to Minnesota to visit our family and we also get our engagement shoot done. Spend 2 hours with her, she shows us the photos she's taken on her camera. They look really great. We have a really good time and we're excited for our photos. She said she'll get the photos to us within a week, which is great because we want to send out our save the dates like a month later in November. A week goes by, we don't hear anything from her, but life happens. We don't think too much of it. 2 weeks go by, so I decide to send an email, say, hey, we really enjoyed our session with you, we're looking forward to receiving our photos so we can send out our save the dates. Nothing. A few days later, I send a text, and this is the number that we had been texting with when we were figuring out a place to meet up for our engagement shoot. It's a blue bubble, it's iMessage. I, I don't think that's like a not legit number. Nothing. 3 weeks go by. Another email, another text, still nothing. That's when I Google her again, and this time on Google Maps I see that her business is temporarily closed, which is fine, but like, why didn't she tell us that? Also, we want our photos. Like, where are our photos? In 4 weeks now, we've still heard nothing. We even find her fiancé on Facebook and message him, and we're like, we hope she's okay. Can you please give us an update? Because honestly, at this point, the only, like, reasonable excuse for not responding to an email or a text, at least with an update, is if you're like literally in the hospital. So I just don't really know what to do. So if anyone has any advice, that would be great. Here's the deal. Here's the deal.

Here's the deal. She did everything right. She did everything right. And I don't think one bad review makes a vendor a bad vendor. So that's where this gets dangerous. That's where this gets dicey, right? Because there are little red flags, but not enough for you to be like, I'm not going to book them because one person didn't like them. Okay. Okay, because In-N-Out's not for everybody. I don't know why. I don't know why. I can't fathom why somebody wouldn't like In-N-Out. Don't come for me in the comments, okay? It's the best fast food cheeseburger of all time. I will die on this hill. You can take the girl out of Southern California, but you cannot take the In-N-Out from my cold dead fingers. So it's easy to reason away that like maybe one person didn't care for her services, even if the review was like, no, we had to send a letter through a lawyer to get our photos. Okay, well that, that one's a little bit more serious. I wouldn't call that an itty bitty red flag. I would call that one a little bit of a bigger red flag, okay? But let's say she did it all correctly. Let's say that review didn't say anything about a lawyer. Let's say all those things. Right now there's an increasing cause for concern. They have a contract together. This is very important. When you are working with vendors, you need to have a contract with them. If you do not have a contract, you do not have a course of action afterwards. Now, as a slight aside, in the past you've heard me talk about frienders. If you have a friend or family member provide services for you on your wedding day, at least write something up. That's not a contract. That does not count in this scenario. You need to make sure you are in a contract, you are contractually bound with this vendor. So you have that piece of paper to refer to. You can use it in a scenario like this with Brightco when your photographer doesn't show up or when they go out of business and you say, hey, I'm out all of these funds. Here is our contract. Here are the screenshots. Here's the proof that I have. Of course, each and every individual scenario is going to vary. So be sure to follow Brightco's lead when you go to sign up for your cancellation insurance and should you need to enact the policy at any point in time. And there is an update to this. But before we get to that, I just really wanted to highlight like she did it all correct, or as correctly as she thought she should, and she still ran into this scenario. Okay, but there's an update and I'm dying to figure out what happened in the scenario. Okay, so let's just hold on, let's just listen.

Let's try this again. I'm Allison. I'm the woman who was scammed by her wedding photographer for an engagement shoot, not for my wedding day, thank goodness. We finally reached a resolution the other day, so I'm giving you an update as to what happened. If you haven't seen the first two videos, then go check those out. They will provide a lot of context. We had our engagement shoot in October. I made that first video 4 weeks after our engagement shoot. She said she would deliver photos within 1 week. We also had a clause in our contract saying that she would respond to any attempts of communication within 2 business days. She did not do that. We had tried to get in touch with her multiple times because we didn't get our photos when she said we would. We texted, we emailed, and we called. For those of you who think I didn't call, and she did not respond to us. 2 weeks later, 6 weeks after our engagement shoot, I posted an update. At this point, we still had not heard from her. We had tried again to get in contact with her, and because it had now been 6 weeks and we had no idea what was going on. And her business was showing that it was temporarily closed. My fiancé decided to file a chargeback to his credit card and also open a dispute with PayPal. And we asked both of them if we should do one or the other, but they said, no, you can do both at the same time, we'll figure it out. However, at the same time, both of those videos went viral, and because of that, a few things happened. Number 1, we heard from her. This was thanks to my video getting posted in a Minnesota photographer's Facebook page. And all of these Minnesota photographers reaching out to me saying that they're so sorry this was happening. They were giving me recommendations for other photographers in the Twin Cities area. And I had a couple people reach out and be like, hey, I think I know who you're talking about. And they said they were reaching out to her to see what was up. Brilliant.

She's already making the right moves. She's getting a chargeback. She's contacting PayPal. Like, she's trying to make the moves of like, hey, this is showing that it's shut down. There is a chance that this will work out for her. But what if it doesn't? BrightCo. But what if that doesn't work out? BrightCo. But what if you paid with a check and that's already cleared? BrightCo. Again, I can't speak for every individual scenario, but if you have a contract with the vendor and you pay them and they go out of business, BrightCo has coverage for this. Anyways, back to the video.

One person let me know that she had received a lot of messages from people in the community and she said she was fine and was just overwhelmed by all of these messages. But she emailed us, she apologized, she delivered the photos. In this email, she also asked if we still wanted her to be our wedding photographer. Uh, and the answer to that was no. She said she understood if we didn't want that, and that if that was the case, she would refund us the retainer minus an engagement fee. Did not say how much that would be. I actually went to her website and looked up the price and I was like, mm, that's a lot for everything that happened. So we emailed her back the next day and we were like, We're glad to hear you're okay. What do you think is a fair price for the engagement shoot fee? Again, no response. A week later, we followed up. We said, hey, what do you think is a fair price? We need to decide on a price for the engagement shoot. And we gave her a week to respond. She didn't respond still. So we updated PayPal. We let PayPal know that we had heard from her, that she had delivered the photos. However, she still had our money and we did not trust her to return it based on her actions and also based on the fact that I had 4 other people reach out to me on TikTok sending me DMs guessing correctly who she was because she had done the exact same thing to them. And someone else actually messaged me the other day adding to that group, which means she has done this to at least 7 people over the course of the last year. This is clearly a pattern. She has withheld photos and/or money to the point where multiple people have had to either hire lawyers file police reports, or report her to the Minnesota Attorney General. So we didn't trust her. We let PayPal know that. When you dispute with PayPal, the other person has to acknowledge and respond to the dispute, which she did.

Okay, pause there for a sec. Pause there for a sec. Imagine, imagine you just take your contract and your receipts to Brico and go handle it. Here's my scenario. Is this covered? Okay, great, handle it. Imagine what it would feel like to have that to fall back on, where you do not have to be contacting your state's Attorney General to try to figure out how to get the situation resolved. I cannot Imagine having to go through that level of detail to try to get your money back from someone who is not performing, who has gone out of business.

Because PayPal let us know that she responded, and yet she still did not respond to our emails. So with all the information we provided, which is all the information we had, PayPal ruled in our favor, closed the case, and refunded us the full $1,300. Unfortunately, some of these other women I've been chatting with, some of them have not received their money back. Some of them have not received their photos back either, and whatever the reason is, that's not okay. However, if you did not have a contract with her, please do not go and post negative reviews. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate negative reviews now, hopefully ward off other people, but it's not fair to post a negative review if you haven't actually worked with this person. That's also why I'm not dropping her name. I believe in accountability. I believe in honesty. And so I will be adding my review to the negative reviews. But social media can get very nasty very fast, and I do not believe in bullying people. If you're a 2024 or 2025 bride or groom, please do your research. And if you see any red flags, listen to your gut. Make sure your contracts have communication clauses and delivery clauses for everything, including the engagement photoshoot. And do not pay via Zelle or check or Venmo because if something goes wrong, it is really hard to get your money back via those avenues. This whole thing has been so unnecessarily stressful, so I'm planning for this to be the last video. I can get back to making content about personal finance like budgeting and saving money and how finance impacts our lives. So please stick around if you're interested in that. And let's start 2024 off on the right foot.

I'm not— okay, I'm not kidding. I'm sweating. I'm sweating. This kind of scenario gives me so much stress because I can't fix it. I can't change it. I can't make a photographer give you photos. I can't give you your money back. Which is why, as a planner, I think cancellation insurance is not only a really good idea, but it's an absolute must-have for everyone who's planning a wedding. That's why I talk about Brightco all the time, even when it's not a sponsored video, because you guys need to be covering your booties when it comes to wedding planning. You're spending thousands of dollars and putting a lot of hope into small businesses that you've never interacted with, and you're hoping that they're going to perform to the level of service that they're showing on their reviews. And that's all you have to go off of. You have very little to almost no recourse that you can go through. Because what are you going to do, just keep calling? Hope that you're the one client they're going to take pity on and return your thousands of dollars back to you out of the goodness of their heart? When you get to this point, when you get to this scenario, you need someone on your side fighting on your behalf. And that's why I'm obsessed with Breko. But even with all this information, all of the reasons that I've been giving you, it can still feel very overwhelming to sign up for wedding insurance simply because it has the word insurance attached to it. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna go ahead and sign up for it right now, okay? We're gonna sign up for a pretend one right now, okay? Oh, look, it's me! Check your price. Event insurance. Wedding. Let's say December 12th. That feels cute. That feels cute. I'm going to hide my email. Don't email me, you creeps. Oh my gosh. Okay. Liability insurance from $102.60. Cancellation insurance from $79.52. But imagine all of these brides that we've seen here today, what their story would look like if they had cancellation insurance for under $80. For under $80, they could be covered for under $80 if they have a contract. They did their due diligence, they got receipts, they did everything that they could, and now they're at their wit's end. Could you imagine for $80 being covered in a scenario like this? Okay, we're going to customize it. Let's— but you know what, for kicks and giggles, I'm going to go ahead and keep entering this information. Let's pretend it's a backyard wedding. Okay, I'm going to hide the information though, because I have to give a physical address. Okay, I have to give up his address again. Please know how quickly this is going. So $1 million to $2 million coverage is pretty basic, including host liquor liability coverage. Perfect. Medical payment coverage. Interesting. Okay, what is this? Uh, helps you cover the cost of medical bills if someone is injured during your wedding event, regardless of who is at fault. This coverage can assist with hospital visits, ambulance fees, and minor medical care. Avoid surprise medical bills and enjoy your special day with confidence. I'm gonna say no in this particular scenario, but I didn't even know you offered that, guys. Bright Coat. Only select yes if you'd like us to buy a venue. No to both because it's a private residence for this wedding that we're planning. Cancellation coverage. Yes. Tip: Most people use their wedding's estimated cost as the coverage amount. Okay, so let's call it a $20,000 wedding. $215. Say freaking less, man. Okay. All right. Let's call it a $50,000 wedding. $353. Okay. You are spending $50,000 on your wedding. Please spend the additional $353 to make sure your event is covered. I'm sweating. I'm getting so— why is this so inexpensive and why don't more people use this? I think it's because the second you mention the term insurance, everyone just goes, I don't like it. I don't like it. Well, which do you like more? Having your photographer go out of business and you being out thousands of dollars, or you dealing with the word insurance and 60 seconds of your time to get coverage? Okay, now down here they have like 4 things that they cover. Cancellation or postponement: get ultimate peace of mind by protecting your investment with coverage for wedding cancellation or postponement due to unforeseen circumstances. Lost deposits: florist shuts down before your wedding, photographer can't be found, get reimbursed for lost deposits if a vendor goes out of business or fails to deliver services. Additional damage or loss: Brightco Wedding Insurance offers options to safeguard against additional damage or loss for things like wedding attire, gifts, or other essentials. Wedding attire, like your dress, like your dress getting absolutely ruined by a seamstress because the salesgirl told you they could absolutely make that adjustment when there's no way on God's green earth that ever could have happened. But it doesn't matter who said what because your dress is still ruined. So what are you going to do? COVID coverage. This is unlike most event cancellation insurance. Brightcove provides COVID protection for the happy couple, the officiant, the immediate family, and the wedding party, ensuring extra peace of mind. So if your dad gets COVID and can't walk you down the aisle and you cannot imagine having your wedding day without him, We have coverage for that. We're going to stick with the $50,000 amount for $353. What the heck? And we're going to click yes, we want to add that. Wait a minute, wait a minute. So we get like— we get $1 to $2 million liability coverage for $108 and cancellation insurance for an additional $352.80, bringing your total to $460.80. That's a lot less than losing $6,000 for a photographer being gone or $3,000 for your dress being destroyed. That's a lot less. That's a lot less. Friends, I know insurance is not sexy. I know thinking about a vendor ghosting you is not fun. I know, uh, anticipating a vendor going out of business is frightening. My intent with videos like this is never to scare you, but to prepare you for real life events that happen so very often. Because for less than $500, not only do you get liability coverage for your event, which oftentimes is required by venues and very smart to get, you also get host liquor liability coverage for if you are serving alcohol. And then to add on that cancellation insurance, Listen, there is video after video after video of scenarios like this on the internet, and they break my heart every single time. And that's why I said at the very beginning of this video, if there's one thing that I can convince every single one of you to purchase for your wedding day, it would be insurance. So that's all we have for today's video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Brightco, thank you again for sponsoring today's video and for making sure that you provide the most comprehensive event insurance and cancellation insurance coverage I have ever seen in my entire career. If you like the video, jump on down there and like the video and subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks. For the Modern Day Bride. And until next week, bye guys!