Love and Death In A Time of COVID

Weddings and funerals are always important, and in more traditional societies like South Korea especially so.  So what to do in an era of continued social distancing, where churches are some of the worst hot-spots for the spread of coronavirus?  Koreans are experimenting with distance celebration and mourning, with some degree of success:

"'We weren’t planning on a big wedding ceremony, but we were going to hold two separate gatherings — one for my family and their acquaintances and one for our friends,' Jung told the Korea JoongAng Daily. 

But after infections swung upwards, we canceled the family ceremony since seniors are at a higher risk [of infection]. We decided to go ahead with the one for our friends, but we only invited those whom we felt were closest to us and would be able to truly feel happy [for our marriage]. We left the choice [to attend] entirely up to our guests. The party started in the evening and went late into the night, and we tried to spread people out so that the restaurant didn't get overly crowded.'

Since July, offline ceremonies are slowly resuming, but industry insiders say outdoor venues have become a lot more popular, probably because it is easier to practice social distancing at those venues and guests feel more comfortable.   

'Outdoor weddings are in vogue since the outbreak,' said Lee Yu-na, Manager of Sales & Marketing at Banyan Tree Club & Spa Seoul in central Seoul. 'Smaller weddings were already quite popular but due to the pandemic, more and more people are looking into having such weddings. Just two years ago, the average number of guests per wedding was about 170 to 200, but now it has fallen to about 100 to 150. We often also hold weddings with less than than 50 guests.'”

The good news is that if South Korea can make these kinds of adjustments, there's no reason other countries can't as well.