For many people planning to get married, the Covid-19 pandemic has been extremely disruptive. From sudden outright bans on weddings except for extreme cases like the terminally ill to restrictions on the numbers attending, nuptials have been very hard to arrange.
However, those who want to get married in 2021 may find the prospects of being able to have the kind of wedding they dream of this summer are more realistic than anyone had dared to hope a few weeks ago. If you live in Dorset, now may be a good time to start checking out wedding venues in Bournemouth and Poole.
With lockdown, increased death rates and infections surging as a new, more infectious variant of the virus took hold, all seemed gloomy at the start of the year.
However, case rates are now falling fast, the number of deaths and hospitalisations are finally on the decrease and, most importantly of all, the vaccination programme has been a huge success so far, racing past the ten million mark. Emerging data is showing the jabs slash infections and also help reduce the spread of the disease.
With the government now pledging to offer the vaccine to all over-50s by May, the prospect of lockdown being gradually unwound over the course of the spring is a tantalising one.
After all, if the people who would be most at risk of getting sick as a result of attending a major gathering like a wedding are safely jabbed up, it could mean all those restrictions are curbed.
However, irrespective of whether it is this summer or later that something approaching normal life can resume – and some still think social distancing might continue into 2022 – there may be some lasting legacies of the crisis in future wedding planning. The big fat wedding, Greek or otherwise, may be less common in future.
Norfolk based wedding celebrant Caroline Rochards certainly thinks so, telling the Eastern Daily Press: “One thing 2020 has shown us however, is that there are other ways of doing things! Smaller weddings are definitely here to stay.”