Should I only hire a wedding coordinator who is insured?

You should only hire vendors that are insured. You should also purchase wedding insurance.

All vendors that you hire need professional insurance and you need a signed contract in place to protect your investment.

The only vendors that are typically not asked for insurance are officiants. For everyone else, your venues will demand it. And wedding insurance is always a good idea.

In case you need any other convincing, I'm just going to leave this here:

https://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/photographer-emergency/720a09b253588e35.html?page=1

Thank you so much! This is really helpful.

Insured is the way to go and most venues require for them to be.

Like people mentioned above, many venues require vendors to carry insurance. If your venue does not require that, and you hire someone without insurance, it really will not affect you. If something were to arise that would typically result in the use of an insurance policy and they do not have insurance, they will be held to their contract between you and them and will have to pay for the losses out of pocket instead of using an insurance policy. Example: you hire a photographer with no insurance, and they lose all your photos. You sue them for $XXX to compensate you for those damages. Typically, the loss would be paid by the insurance policy, but if they don't have one, they would owe you out of pocket. The downfall to this- you may not be paid in a timely manner.