Is it safe to get married during corona?

 

Couples are searching for the perfect marriage garden, pretty dresses, and performing small functions in order to tie the knot. But is it really safe? Let’s find out.

In a normal year, lots of Indians (myself included) would be getting ready to attend summer weddings right about now—steam-ironing new suits and sundresses, ordering gifts for the happy couples, writing toasts, rehearsing dance steps, securing vacation days to travel out of town. But as we all well know by now, 2020 is no normal year. The global pandemic and the social-distancing policies that have been put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19 have effectively ruled out large gatherings and made many people, in particular the elderly, much more hesitant to go far from home.

En masse, weddings have been dramatically downsized, postponed, or canceled. The gauzy, fluttery dress I bought in February to wear to a friend’s now-postponed May wedding hangs solemnly in my closet, a delicate question mark suspended in the air. The virtually nonexistent wedding season of 2020 promises to be strange: a May-to-October stretch with an anomalous number of free weekends. And there’s a strong possibility that this weirdness will last, that weddings as we know them—grand, festive events, with extended family and friends in attendance—won’t be the norm again for a long time.

Social-distancing measures are likely to make big wedding celebrations essentially impossible for the rest of this year. The Ministry of Health, India still recommends that Indians cancel gatherings of more than 20 people “for organizations that serve higher-risk populations,” and many state governments have imposed limits on the number of people who can gather for any sort of party or event.

There’s no way to predict, of course, whether “wedding season” as we know it will even be a possibility by this time next year. Strict disease-prevention measures will likely still be in place in a number of states—some of which will make it difficult for vendors and venues to commit to big weddings. Small, low-key ceremonies might seem especially appealing now because they can be adapted to whatever restrictions might be in place in a year. But even without constraints on their guest list, couples starting to plan a wedding right around now might well find that the venues they want are booked through the end of 2021. This by itself would be enough to push some couples toward a simpler, more scaled-back, easier-to-plan wedding day.

Moreover, wedding trends are—for lack of a less cringey term—contagious; many couples plan their wedding day by borrowing elements of what they’ve seen and liked at other weddings. In the months and years ahead, couples who might have otherwise opted for the whole enchilada might model their own wedding day after friends’ or relatives’ small ceremonies and elopements. Small wedding ceremonies could, in other words, become more common not just for health reasons, but because coziness and intimacy might organically become trendy.

Inevitably, the big wedding celebrations lost to the coronavirus will be disappointing for families and would-be guests, and heartbreaking for marrying couples. On the other hand, the purpose of a wedding is to be a public declaration of commitment and enduring love, and it’s hard to imagine a more powerful testament to the durability of two people’s bond than the story of how they survived a pandemic together, endured the hardships it presented and made personal sacrifices for the greater good. As a friend of mine recently put it, in the future, the stories of couples who married during the coronavirus era will be the stuff of family legend, of toasts at anniversary parties.

Grandma and Grandpa could only have a small wedding because they were living through the coronavirus pandemic—so here we all are, on their 50th wedding anniversary, to give them the celebration they deserve.