It’s been one hell of a year for brides, grooms and everyone working in the wedding industry. Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit South Africa’s shores back in March and hard lockdown commenced, uncertainty came to haunt us all.
Autumn and winter weddings had to be cancelled in haste, while the Spring nuptials you’d been dreaming of may not play out quite the way you imagined…
The good news, of course, is that wedding celebrations are once again allowed to take place under the recently announced Level 2 Lockdown measures. But, according to directives gazetted by the South African government earlier this week, there are a few big, make-or-break caveats.
Let’s take a look:
Number of guests: The number of attendees may not exceed 50 people. This includes the couple getting married.
Masks: Everyone in attendance MUST wear a mask at all times, except when eating and drinking. So, yes, this means the happy couple will also have to wear their masks during the ceremony. (Rumour has it, you will not even be able to remove the mask for THE KISS.) If someone arrives without a mask, they may not be allowed to enter. (Cloth mask wedding favours, here we come!)
Screening: If you haven’t included one of those infrared thermometer gun thingies in your wedding budget, you may have to stretch it by a few hundred bucks, as screening stations are required at the venue’s entrance.
Sanitise: Finally, you will need to have an ample supply of sanitiser available. Everyone will be required to sanitise upon entry and then at regular intervals throughout the proceedings. Microphones, podiums etc will also have to be sanitised after use by every person.
So, this begs the question: is it worth having a wedding under these strange circumstances or better to wait until you can go all out?
Personally (Nadia from the #MWBrideJourney here) , as someone who had to postpone her April wedding indefinitely, I have no idea what to do. On the one hand, we don’t want to delay too long and kind of lose enthusiasm for all the plans we’ve already put in place. On the other, will we look back on our Covid-19-laced wedding and feel like it was only half the event it could have been?
In all honesty, this is one of those occasions where the best you can do is simply go with your gut instinct and not pay too much attention to what anyone else says. We’re still in the process of deliberating, but hopefully we’ll gain some clarity soon.
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!