When the couple sent their save-the-date card back in March, we should have known we weren’t going to physically attend the wedding. But September seemed far away, and we couldn’t imagine that the pandemic would continue to rage. The groom is one of my husband’s closest friends; we told them we wouldn’t miss their wedding for the world. The promise rang hollow in our ears by July.
They chose to keep the date, so we planned to attend via livestream. We wondered if that counted as attending at all.The pandemic has sucked dry so many special occasions like this one, leaving us all in a desert of banal, identical days. What’s given me hope is that some people have enough extra creativity to explore new ways of celebrating, like our neighbor down the street who threw a socially distant block party for her daughter’s graduation with individually wrapped snacks and a bubble machine. Another friend built an elaborate outdoor “ninja obstacle course” for the nearby kids to celebrate her son’s birthday. But these are the exceptions. Most special occasions are not so easily converted to pandemic-friendly celebrations.
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Although we didn’t blame our friends for not postponing their wedding, we also didn’t expect our experience of their big day to feel like it should. A livestreamed ceremony seemed to me a mere shadow, almost a mockery, of what a wedding is supposed to be. There would be no long flight from San Francisco to Baltimore, no rushing to a department store to replace the dress shoes forgotten at home, no crying during the first dance, no reunions with old friends. Instead, their wedding was just another virtual event on the calendar, another hour we planned to spend in front of a screen. And while I’m sure our friends still looked forward to their marriage, I can’t imagine what losses they grieved as they planned a small ceremony with masked family members and silent, online spectators.
A week before the wedding, however, we received a box in the mail. I remember opening it in the morning, wearing sweatpants and sipping coffee. On the top of the package was an ornate booklet with a note in the front cover:
Dear Loved Ones,
It means a lot that you would join us in this celebration of the sacrament of marriage. As we embrace the new normal that the Covid-19 pandemic has created, we invite you to participate in some special ways… We’ve included some sensory treats to allow you to experience the tastes, smells, and visuals that we are experiencing. Looking forward to being with you again!
Underneath the booklet was a random assortment of items: a candle, cookies, tea bags, incense sticks, and a jar of spice mix. The booklet went on to describe exactly when and how to use the items in the package for each phase of their wedding weekend. The biscuits and chai were for a pre-wedding tea ceremony, the candle and incense for mass, and the spice mix for the “reception dinner,” which was to be cooked in more than 100 homes on the same night. Recipe cards for veggie masala and panna cotta were tucked inside the booklet’s colorful pages.
A livestreamed ceremony seemed to me a mere shadow, almost a mockery, of what a wedding is supposed to be.
What a cute idea, I thought. But we didn’t have all we needed for these recipes, and I couldn’t imagine enduring a trip to the grocery store for a second time that week. And the booklet, for all its detail, forgot to mention how to burn incense. I felt happy to light the candle, pop a pizza in the oven, and call it a wedding celebration. Our friends would never know whether or not we followed the itinerary, and they’d still be married by the end of the weekend. Like any other virtual event, my full participation seemed optional. Besides, with everything else going on, playing their little wedding game felt like an inconvenience. I was just too tired, too stressed, to deal with it. I closed the booklet and continued sipping my coffee.
Then I saw the shipping label next to our address on the package. More than $10. Not all of their many wedding guests lived as far away as we did—but still. I had a nagging sense that even if we lived in Alaska, this box would still sit on my kitchen counter. And I noticed that they had carefully arranged the wedding “ingredients” side by side in a piece of cutout cardboard, like a fancy charcuterie box. It made me think back to how much work we did for our DIY wedding: gluing shimmering strips of paper onto invitations, creating the playlist, and organizing all the decorations. All our effort was for an event where we actually got to see our guests. What would I have done if my wedding was virtual? Would I have gone this far to make it more than a livestream? I went to the store that afternoon for frozen veggies, a red onion, and cream.
On the day of the ceremony, we tried to follow the instructions carefully as someone on the YouTube chat taught us about each stage of the wedding mass. We did have some false starts with burning the incense, but I eventually got the smoking sticks propped upright in a shot glass without igniting anything else. Then we read the prayers, we stood, we sat, we kneeled. And with our sleepy dog as our only witness, we clapped, cheered, and got teary-eyed. We adored the bride, who wore a stunning dress decorated with shimmering designs, and we said to each other, “Wow, I’ve never seen him with such a big smile.” In the afternoon, we prepared the panna cotta together, and in the evening, we cleared the clutter from our dining table and lit the candle again for the wedding feast.
Don’t get me wrong, the virtual wedding experience still paled in comparison to attending in person. People occasionally stood in front of the camera, and nothing was life-sized, just like any other virtual event. But of all the days in these six pandemic months, it’s one of only a few that felt filled to the brim with joy. And it’s not because that day was anything like the full-blown wedding experience. Burning a candle didn’t make our futon feel like a church pew, and sending our friends a selfie as we ate the veggie masala was nothing like hugging them in person in a reception hall. But their wedding day was more than a livestream. It was sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that drew us into a sacred experience. It was joining in rituals, making new memories in familiar surroundings, and finding innovative uses for a shot glass. It was witnessing their union, even virtually. I am so glad I participated, so glad I was “there.”
