Paris: Thanks to a French insurance company, brides and bridegrooms with cold feet no long

er face financial disaster from a canceled wedding. For a small premium, they can take out a policy protecting them from love gone away or anything else that threatens to rain on their big day.

Despite France’s economic woes, the amount of money spent on weddings is rising 5-10 per cent a year. And people in the Paris region now dish out an average of 60,000 francs on tying the knot. But life is unpredictable and non-refundable, so French insurers have stepped in to ease the risk, finding their own little niche in the business of love. They join colleagues in Britain, where insurers say wedding cancellation policies have been around for about a decade.

About 5 per cent of insured weddings there never make it to the altar. Indeed, better safe than sorry. "Obviously there are some who are superstitious, but in general people like the idea," said Jacqueline Loeb, head of a Parisian insurance company.

In the past six weeks, she has sold 15 policies at a premium of about 3 per cent of the amount a client wants to be insured for.

These careful customers, she said, have included a man who was worried his fiancee would have an allergic attack on her wedding day and a woman whose future mother-in-law was gravely ill.

The policy covers those and other nuptial impediments: an accident that forces a cancellation of a wedding, an unexpected change of venue for the reception, damage caused at it, and even honeymoons that don’t happen. As for the ultimate deal-breaker, cold feet, they are also insured-but only until eight clays before the ceremony. British insurers, however, said they wouldn't touch that clause with a stick. Steve Warner, sales director of Insure Expo-Sure in London, says the six policies he sells each week in the wedding season protect against things like damaged wedding dresses, illness and death, but not changes 0f heart." Disinclination to marry is not covered," he said. Ms Loed, who says hers is the only French agency offering wedding policies, said she started the service last December.

A chateau outside Paris that hosts receptions was taking a beating from last-minute cancellations, and approached Ms Loed to see if there wash’t some way of protecting itself. She obliged, then started advertising with caterers and wedding departments in large department stores, and the idea has taken off nicely." We respond to a need," she said.

What’s the main purpose of the passage？

A．To thank a French insurance company for what has been done.

B．To explain how a French insurance company works.

C．To tell brides and bridegrooms what to do before getting married.

D．To ask husband and wife-to-be to take out an insurance policy.