Sydney Wedding Venue Goes Out Of Business: How Wedding Insurance Would Have Helped  

Kirribilli is a beautiful waterside suburb of Sydney, just north over the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge.

You can get there by ferry or train.

It is a perfect place to watch the annual New Year’s Eve fireworks.

Great restaurants and bars.

Million-dollar terraces in some of the oldest, tree-lined streets in Sydney.

And did we mention the Kirribilli Club?

A club with sweeping views over the harbour hosting everything from regulars popping in for an after-work beer to special events like concerts, reunions, and, you guessed it, weddings.

Regretfully, a few weeks back, the club went into administration.

It was reasonably big news in Sydney because the club couldn’t overcome its financial burdens despite its members’ efforts, and Sydney lost a truly fine harbour-side venue.

Sadly, we knew what was likely coming next. We didn’t expect to read about it in the media.

Wedding venues can go out of business with little warning

We don’t know Rachel Zheng personally, but we know a few things about Rachel and her wedding venue experience.

We know this because Rachel made both TV and print with her story.

Rachel was married last Saturday.

It should have been a wedding for 100 people at the Kirribilli Club.

It was elsewhere.

After the Kirribilli Club collapsed financially, Rachel became an unwitting creditor of the club thanks to the $1,679 down payment Rachel paid for the venue’s Harbourview Room, complete with a three-course dinner and canapés.

For those 100 people.

We say unwitting because not only did Rachel very unlikely want this outcome, but it was only by chance that she found out a few days before her wedding from a now redundant employee of the Kirribilli Club.

That call from the former employee of the club was out of the employee’s sense of obligation to the many couples who had paid a deposit for a wedding, if only so their special days were not collectively ruined even more than a lost deposit.

Unfortunately, the Kirribilli Club going out of business with little warning is a reality in the world of wedding venues.

Seasonality, increasing food and staff costs, growing rents and the squeeze on wedding venues are always there. Throw in postponements due to wet weather or illness, and you can have a recipe for disaster.

What is worse, closer to the day, the club would have asked Rachel for another deposit, and you get the picture of poor Rachel and her exposure for out-of-pocket loss.

According to the article we read, Rachel’s possible exposure to the club could have been $16,790 – something no couple can surely sneeze at.

How you can cover yourself in the event of wedding venue failure

As a creditor of the club, Rachel may get some cents on the dollar back once the club administrators have done their work.

Unfortunately, not only does that leave Rachel out of pocket, but it also means that Rachel needs to stump up extra cash for a new venue when, typically, wedding budgets and cash flow are tight.

Wedding supplier failure is one of the critical areas covered in a typical wedding insurance policy.

At Wedsure, for a $235 policy, we offer up to $3,000 worth of wedding supplier failure coverage, which means Rachel would have had her deposit fully covered.

Our top package offers up to $30,000 worth of wedding supplier failure cover. The bigger the wedding, the bigger the venue and exposure.

Before paying any deposits for your wedding—especially to wedding venues—take out wedding insurance. Keep your receipts and contracts, and you should be covered in the event of wedding supplier failure.

Wedding supplier failure warning signs to look out for

Unfortunately, wedding suppliers are akin to going belly-up with little or no warning.

It is simply the nature of the industry.

Worse still, you might not even know your supplier has gone out of business until close to your special day.

Once the menu has been planned and tasted, why would you keep talking until closer to the big day?

One way to monitor your suppliers’ activity is to closely monitor their social media.

Minimising your deposits and spreading them closer to the end of the contract can make financial security sense.

Ask to talk to recent references and understand how other couples felt about the wedding supplier and their performance.

If your wedding supplier stops communicating, that is an obvious warning sign.

There is a warning sign if they unexpectedly ask for an additional deposit.

Sadly, you’ll be in trenches planning, and nobody can reasonably ask you to keep tabs on all your wedding suppliers.

Worse, if something does go wrong, it could well be action stations with the need to rapidly source new wedding suppliers and likely also find extra cash to cover the difference.

Which, thankfully, Rachel was able to do.

This is why, rather than looking for warning signs, we recommend taking out wedding insurance coverage instead.

We hope Rachel’s special day was magical. We have no doubt it was.

And Rachel, thank you for sharing your story. Hopefully other couples can avoid the wedding venue situation you sadly found yourself in.