Cross-border ceremony during Covid

Fortunately, my parents and his live near each other, but we did have a miniwedding (without a virtual component) and postpone our larger reception. I would definitely advocate for doing that instead of postponing the whole thing.


If I'm reading this correctly, both sets of parents would have to quarantine upon arrival, but they would be allowed to come to NYC. If that's the case, I would go with that plan. Each set of parents can arrive a day or two ahead of time and only leave their hotel for your wedding. As long as they keep masks on when they go outside, it's very unlikely that they'd be able to transmit the virus to anyone even if they had it. And, if the enforcement of the quarantine rules is similar in NYC and MA, there's very little risk that they'd get in trouble for this. To me, it would be worth risking a fine to have them there anyway. You probably shouldn't go to a restaurant if everyone hasn't been quarantining appropriately, but if you all feel comfortable eating together, you could could have food delivered to a park or large hotel suite and eat there.

Thanks for the suggestion! I think something like that could work, and especially allow us to plan - like hopefully the quarantine rules are relaxed by then (planning for summer 2021) but what you suggested would be an easy pivot. Good call on the restaurant, we're thinking June or July so we'd be able to keep everything outside.

My fiancé and I are in a similar situation. He's from Spain, I'm from the US, and we'll be getting married in Chicago. We live in Spain, and the constantly changing quarantine requirements both here and in the US made planning anything for 2021 too risky. We've decided to just plan everything for 2022 and hope for the best. We didn't feel comfortable asking people to consider major international travel plans for next year when everything is so up in the air right now. He has quite a lot of family planning on making the trip from Spain to Chicago (somewhere around 20-25 people), so it felt like the right choice to wait another year so people can hopefully travel safely.

Thanks for the perspective! We're definitely going to leave the reception/big party with friends and extended family to 2022 for the same reasons, I want it to be in Canada and at this point it looks like the border will be closed until a vaccine's available. I'm thinking if we do end up planning a small marriage ceremony next year, keeping it to just parents will also make it easy to postpone/change plans if necessary without impacting any guests for the bigger celebration.