Getting Married During COVID-19
Many spring wedding plans have been thwarted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with summer brides feeling their nervousness creep in as well. While there is always the option to cancel or postpone, many couples are deciding to get creative and still get hitched, despite the situation at hand.
A couple in Madison decided to move up their May 2nd wedding date, wanting to ride out this chaos as a married couple. They were able to have a ceremony at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, adhering to the 10 person limit for gatherings, with about 100 friends and family members watching via Zoom. They exited to a surprising and thoughtful gesture, a mobile receiving line, 18 cars honking and waving to wish them well.
Another couple in Green Bay decided to press on with their March 21st wedding date, but with a drastically different plan. What was originally going to be a 150 person wedding in Texas, was now only a gathering of immediate family (and hundreds of friends and family members tuning in on Facebook Live), with chairs spaced 6 feet apart, in Green Bay.
So What’s Plan B?
Those couples were both able to secure a marriage license in time, before circuit courts began limiting hours and access to certain departments. If you already have a marriage license, it's easy enough to pull your big day off, just in a very different way than Plan A. Companies like Married Livestream and My Streaming Wedding do the connecting for you and allow you to broadcast your nuptials with your friends and family watching from the safety of their own home.
There’s also always the option to do an intimate outdoor ceremony somewhere meaningful to the both of you, with proper social distancing measures being followed. As long as you have your marriage license in hand, an officiant is easy enough to track down, even in these times, or ask a friend or family member to get ordained online. With an intimate gathering, they will probably be more likely to say “yes” than if they were marring you in front of 200 people!
No marriage license? With new information on COVID-19 coming in daily, and new and/or loosening restrictions to boot, court websites are changing hours and available services everyday. Most Wisconsin courts are still issuing marriage licenses but it varies by county, so check the court website of the county you reside in for modified procedures and hours. Milwaukee County, for example, has created an online option to both apply and receive your marriage license. If your county courthouse is still processing licenses, a one stop shop like WebWed may be the way to go for you to limit an already stressful undertaking. You can go through them to obtain your license through your county of residence courthouse (again, as long as they are open and processing marriage licenses), perform your virtual ceremony, and stream it live for your “guests”.
Keep in mind rules for gatherings when planning your new guest list. If your state’s current mandate only allows for no more than 10 persons in a room at once, that doesn’t mean you get to invite 10 guests. That means that you and your fiance count as 2 people, your officiant is your third person and a witness is a 4th person. That leaves you with 6 spaces left and assuming you’ll still want a photographer to capture your special moment, you can invite 5 others to witness your “I Do’s” in person. Still using your venue as your ceremony location? Count in at least 1 person from the venue since they’ll need to be there to open the doors, turn the lights on and help make the magic happen!
Don’t forget to include a few fun extras to keep your day special. Place an order for take out of your very favorite food. Many restaurants are offering drinks, wine or growlers to go too! Couples forging on and insisting on tying the knot, despite the chaos, is quintessential romance. Adapting to a truly unpredictable and unprecedented situation like this, puts things in perspective and makes couples and guests remember what weddings should really be about. You know, that “ In sickness and in health, for better or for worse”-stuff.