The ringing of a save-the-date e-mail or the opening of a thick white card falling through the mailbox are sounds of summer that I fear. Make no mistake about it: big weddings are back.
No sooner had we all screamed ‘Freedom Day’ than my Instagram feed was crammed with blurry images of over 200 people in a sweaty marquee. So much for the rise of simple, elegant weddings that only a handful of your closest friends and family attend. Couples reflexively returned to their oversized Big Days because Covid is over, right?
Well, as it turns out, not quite. We are now approaching the end of a bizarre summer on the head-in-the-sand island where anything is possible, unless of course you want to go abroad. If you dare to dream of a ray of sunshine, it means several urgent and expensive tests, confusing forms for passenger search and frequently changing traffic light rules. Traveling with people who have been tested or vaccinated to another country, where the case numbers are significantly lower than the UK, is somehow seen as more dangerous than singing along to Come On Eileen across generations in a poorly ventilated place.
Keeping those strict vacation restrictions on is a farce when research found that only four out of 1,000 fully vaccinated travelers returning to the UK tested positive for the virus as of July. This week, several friends of mine tested positive after attending music festivals and a Leeds United football game. My studies may be a little rough, but it seems like there is a home advantage when it comes to catching Covid.
The persistence of strict travel rules in the face of a completely open society makes vacation abroad even more precarious. I have booked a trip to Spain for this fall. But if I get infected with Covid in advance at a major event – not unlikely given the latest ONS data that around 1 in 70 people are currently suffering from the disease – my vacation will be over before it has started.
Since I haven’t been abroad for two years, this break feels much more important than being seated at an acquaintance’s wedding, with whom I had a good few nights in 2013, if it happens so often, I’m not ready for this one much needed break for having to forego someone’s ultimately unnecessary big bash.
The days after attending a wedding have become a nervous waiting game. My brother went to a bank holiday wedding that has so far had four guests infected with the virus. The numbers will inevitably rise. In early August, a friend was a guest at a wedding where more than 50 participants tested positive. She managed to avoid Covid but was still isolated for 10 days because how could you normally live your life armed with this information?
There is no doubt that the unhindered occurrence of these supersize events is causing the spread to swell. Great Britain, a long-time master of sky-high Covid rates – our current caseload is 350 per 100,000, about twice as much as newly red-listed Thailand – failed to keep infections low this summer, and now we are standing before another harsh winter. It is certainly not inconceivable that off-peak holiday countries could start tightening restrictions on UK travelers if we continue down this path. But hey, at least we’ll be stuck here drinking cheap wine and dancing to Sweet Caroline while we spread the virus.
Vaccines gave us a chance to get back to normal life, but because we became a completely binary nation – thanks, Twitter – we asked for all or nothing. In one fell swoop, masks had to disappear and the floodgates were open to meet 250 of your dearest friends at once. It’s worth noting that we’re an outlier in this regard. Those who made it abroad this summer tell me how mask compliance and other Covid measures are much more apparent in Spain and France. Yes, our friends across the canal, who have long protested against lockdown restrictions and vaccination passes, don’t mind putting on the diaper. Yet their international travel restrictions are looser than ours.
The news about traveling abroad is all false. Just as disinfecting surfaces was seen as more important than opening a window, it has implied that attending a large wedding is safer than vacationing at a Spanish resort (where cases are currently a third of the UK rate). If we have to learn to live with the virus, why doesn’t it extend to travel?
I feel sorry for people whose weddings were cruelly canceled last year, but let’s face it, they were hardly the biggest victims of the pandemic. Talk to someone who has lost a relative to Covid, a late diagnosed illness, or who has plunged into poverty due to lengthy lockdowns. Besides, what’s wrong with an intimate wedding? Two of my close friends had a 10 person ceremony which by all accounts (luckily I didn’t make the cut) was beautiful. I just wish they could enjoy a stress free honeymoon.