Item
The Plague Wedding
Title (Dublin Core)
The Plague Wedding
Disclaimer (Dublin Core)
DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.
Description (Dublin Core)
My husband’s cousin got married outside Cincinnati, Ohio in the fall of 2020. The invitation said the event was outdoors, and we expected it would be small. My husband and I drove his mother across multiple states so she could be there for the ceremony and celebration.
We had some hope that people were being mindful of pandemic precautions, as most establishments required employees and patrons to wear masks in shared spaces, and there were plenty of signs, paid advertising and graffiti, that suggested locals were disappointed by the botched handling of the pandemic to that point. Spray paint scrawled over a Trump campaign poster reading “Trump lied and my mother died” was especially memorable.
When it came time for the actual wedding however, all hopes that the wedding guests would be responsible were quickly dashed. Ignoring signs and pleas from the woman at the hotel’s front desk, guests waited for the “party bus” in the hotel lobby, maskless and chugging White Claws, then leaving the empty cans for the same woman to clean after the bus arrived. We had hoped that these guests were going to a different wedding, but when it became apparent we were all going to the same place, we opted to drive ourselves to the venue, not wanting to be in close quarters on the bus to and fro with these fools.
The small, intimate wedding we were expecting to attend had over 150 guests. The ceremony was outdoors as the invitation mentioned, but the reception was zipped up in a large party tent, and the only ones wearing masks were the three of us. I took a picture of the guest list, not so I could remember at which table I was supposed to sit, but so I would know who to sic the Health Department on when I inevitably tested positive for COVID in the following days.
We had some hope that people were being mindful of pandemic precautions, as most establishments required employees and patrons to wear masks in shared spaces, and there were plenty of signs, paid advertising and graffiti, that suggested locals were disappointed by the botched handling of the pandemic to that point. Spray paint scrawled over a Trump campaign poster reading “Trump lied and my mother died” was especially memorable.
When it came time for the actual wedding however, all hopes that the wedding guests would be responsible were quickly dashed. Ignoring signs and pleas from the woman at the hotel’s front desk, guests waited for the “party bus” in the hotel lobby, maskless and chugging White Claws, then leaving the empty cans for the same woman to clean after the bus arrived. We had hoped that these guests were going to a different wedding, but when it became apparent we were all going to the same place, we opted to drive ourselves to the venue, not wanting to be in close quarters on the bus to and fro with these fools.
The small, intimate wedding we were expecting to attend had over 150 guests. The ceremony was outdoors as the invitation mentioned, but the reception was zipped up in a large party tent, and the only ones wearing masks were the three of us. I took a picture of the guest list, not so I could remember at which table I was supposed to sit, but so I would know who to sic the Health Department on when I inevitably tested positive for COVID in the following days.
Date (Dublin Core)
November 14, 2020
Creator (Dublin Core)
Self
Event Identifier (Dublin Core)
HIST643
Partner (Dublin Core)
Arizona State University
Type (Dublin Core)
Text story
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
English
Education--Universities
English
Home & Family Life
English
Travel
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
wedding
family
party
precaution
COVID+
mask
Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)
plague wedding
History of Tourism
Collection (Dublin Core)
College COVID Stories
Linked Data (Dublin Core)
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
10/15/2023
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
11/09/2023
Date Created (Dublin Core)
11/14/2020
Item sets
This item was submitted on October 15, 2023 by [anonymous user] using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: http://mail.covid-19archive.org/s/archive
Click here to view the collected data.