Doing it differently: Wedding workarounds from around the world
Couples are tying the knot with guests in their cars, on the street, in the driveway...
Love finds a way, they say. Here’s a look at couples from around the world who got innovative with their wedding ceremonies amid the pandemic.
The drive-in wedding: An Indian-origin couple in Essex, England, got married in the presence of 200 friends and family in a drive-in ceremony, in the first week of October. Roma Popat and Vinal Patel had their wedding at a 500-acre estate. Guests arrived in cars, were given a hamper containing snacks, hand sanitiser and bin liners (for their garbage). They could also order food off an app, to be delivered by waiters, while the ceremony was held live, and beamed on a giant screen for those in the socially distanced distance.
The driveway wedding: In New York, Kelly Donohue and Andrew Scheurlein got married at their driveway, in April. They wore the clothes they’d picked out months earlier. Friends and family stayed in their parked cars and watched from a distance. The groom’s father officiated, in front of the couple’s garage door, which was draped in white and topped with a little floral arrangement, for the occasion.
Married in the street: A couple in Pittsburgh, Nikita Raman and James Kennedy, decided to make use of the few minutes of outside exercise time the government allowed in the first week of April, to take the plunge. They had a self-uniting ceremony at an intersection, with two friends present as witnesses. They read their vows out to each other, standing in the street. The only others present were neighbours who gathered in their balconies to watch, but the wedding did make it to The New York Times..
On a state border: Om Prakash Sha and his fiancée, Kajol Sah, found themselves separated by a state border at the start of the lockdown. By May, they’d had enough of him being stuck in West Bengal and her in Assam, so they got special permission to meet at the border, with a few relatives as witnesses. And were married in a makeshift mandap near a border checkpoint.
The virtual nikkah: Through the pandemic, from Hyderabad to Bihar, couples made news for conducting nikkah ceremonies via video calls. The bride and the groom would each log in from their homes. After the ceremony was over, the bride’s veil dropped and she and the groom would meet, via screen, for the first time as mian and biwi.