10 ST THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020Vows
Jo Ellen Chism, 57, a retiree who lives in The
Woodlands, Texas, north of Houston, was
nervous about attending her stepson’s wed-
ding on June 20.
“They were going to postpone it, but then
the Catholic church decided they would
open and would have up to 75 people,” she
said. “Seventy-five people seemed like a
pretty big gathering to me during this Covid
time.”
She went to support her family. She was
inside the church for an hourlong service
that included a processional and commun-
ion. At the reception, at Haak Winery, she
sat indoors at a round table with other
guests, some of whom were from out of
town. While everyone started the day in
masks, they took them off for photos and
never replaced them.
Her symptoms started four days later.
With a runny nose, sore throat and bad
headache, it could have been a sinus infec-
tion. Two days later, she tested positive for
Covid-19 along with 12 other guests, includ-
ing her 10-year-old grandson and the
groom’s 76-year-old grandfather. He is still
recovering after a trip to the emergency
room with double pneumonia. She said 13
additional guests had symptoms but didn’t
get tested.
Ms. Chism’s oldest son kept track of all
the sick guests through the seating chart,
on which he marked who was positive, neg-
ative and untested. Still, like most so-called
superspreader events, without sophis-
ticated contact tracing, it’s impossible to
identify Patient Zero. “I could just kick my-
self because I probably shouldn’t have gone
to that wedding,” she said. “I am really
thankful I was not terribly ill.”
Vendors Helpless at Controlling Behavior
After a brief pause, wedding season is back
in full swing across the country. Couples are
working within the confines of state laws to
carry out their nuptials during the pan-
demic. But despite precautions, the coro-
navirus has swept into many of these
events, both large and small, infecting
guests and vendors.
The situation is so dire, some wedding
planners are self-quarantining after events
and even subcontracting their duties at the
reception, the part of the weddings where
people mingle more closely. Some brides
and grooms are having guests sign liability
forms upon arrival. Others say they are los-
ing sleep for two weeks after their wedding,
wondering what unintentional harm they
might have caused to people they love.
In June, a wedding planner in Arkansas
who wished to remain anonymous to pro-
tect her business, predicted weddings
would become the next superspreader
events.
“Weddings are so different from going
into a store or sitting in a restaurant for 45
minutes,” she said. “These receptions last
for three, four hours, and everyone is in an
indoor space, breathing the air. They aren’t
wearing masks and they are dancing. And
when they start drinking, it’s like there is no
pandemic.”
Six months ago her anxieties were about
the weather or tight schedules. Now they
are much heavier. “I am scared there is go-
ing to be an outbreak at one of my weddings
and someone is going to die,” she said.
The problem, she said, is that she and
other vendors are helpless at controlling
guests’ behavior at a private party. “All the
vendors are masked up, and I am cracking
the whip on the vendors, but I can’t do any-
thing with the guests,” she said.
That vendor, despite her nervousness,
pointed out that she is contractually obligat-
ed to carry out terms of the contract signed
with the couple.
Sarah Bett, a wedding planner in Hous-
ton, said even if vendors had power to rein
in rowdy guests, the bride and groom could
just move their event to a less strict venue.
“Some venues make the bride wear masks,
while others say those walking down the
aisle are exempt,” Ms. Bett said. “It’s a little
lawless down here.”
Without universal standards, she is at the
mercy of her clients, many of whom want
their festivities indoors, without masks,
with out-of-town friends and with dancing.
“I have a grandmother who is 90 who I am
around a lot,” she said. “I haven’t had my
first wedding yet this summer, but when I
do, I am going to self-quarantine after.”Differing Rules and Regulations
State laws vary when it comes to weddings.
Some wedding spaces are governed by the
same rules as restaurants, meaning they
can accommodate a certain percentage of
their overall capacity. In Arkansas, for ex-
ample, you can fill venues to 66 percent ca-
pacity. So an event in a 1,000-person ball-
room can legally host 666 guests. In other
states events are limited to the size of thegroup. In parts of New York, for example,
gatherings are limited to 50 people regard-
less of the space.
Ms. Bett said many of her clients felt safer
with smaller affairs. “I have clients doing
private, intimate ceremonies, because no
one is making a big stink about those,” she
said. “No one wants to be the new epicenter
of the outbreak.”
But even weddings with the tightest
guest list aren’t immune to the coronavirus.
Sunshine Borrer, 26, a veterinary techni-
cian in Houston, attended her sister-in-
law’s wedding in Crockett, Texas, which has
a population of 6,000. “It was a real small
town,” she said. “Covid wasn’t something I
was super concerned about.”
The 30-person wedding was held out-
doors, but the after party was in a small bar
area of an indoor restaurant.
It took about a week for her symptoms to
develop. She tested positive for Covid-19,
along with the bride and groom, another
couple and the bride’s daughter. Fortu-
nately all the cases were mild.
She noticed there is no etiquette for how
to communicate a coronavirus outbreak to
wedding guests. “The bride and groom
maybe told the people they were living with,
but that was it,” she said. “They told one of
my other sisters-in-law, and she is a nurse,
so she took it upon herself to tell people.”
Ms. Chism said it was her oldest son, not
the bride and groom, who alerted wedding
guests to the virus exposure. “If it were me,
I would have been on the phone calling ev-
ery single person,” she said. “But it wasn’t
me.”
Pre-wedding events are risky as well. In
July, Kathleen Oglesby, 66, hosted a tea-
party bridal shower at her home in Aubrey,
Texas, for her daughter-in-law. The 10
guests wore big, Kentucky Derby-style hats
and ate mini Bundt cakes. Just days afterthe event, the entire guest list went into a
two-week quarantine after a guest tested
positive for the virus.
“She was a friend of my daughter-in-
law’s, and she helped me so much with the
bridal shower that I went to her house and
brought her a wreath as a thank you,” she
said. “I’m so lucky I didn’t get it, because I
probably wouldn’t make it.” Ms. Oglesby
has an underlying heart condition.
“It was really scary,” she added. “My
mind was running wild.”Trying Not to Be a Superspreader
Some couples are acutely aware of the fact
that their wedding could turn into a super-
spreader event.
Kate, 31, a social worker for the state of
New York, married her husband, a 30-year-
old engineer, in a boutique hotel in central
New York during the July 4 weekend. She
didn’t want to give her full name, because
“there’s a lot of judgment for people who
went through with weddings, even with pre-
cautions.”
The event had less than 50 attendees, in-
cluding vendors. Masks were on the entire
time even outside and in photographs.
There was no dancing — not even a first
dance for the bride and groom. “We didn’t
want to leave room for interpretation,” she
said. Still, she spent her wedding night in
the honeymoon suite of the boutique hotel
worrying. “I was hit with the thought:
‘What did we just do? What if everyone gets
sick?’ ” she said. “I didn’t sleep more than 10
minutes that whole night.”
She checked in with guests regularly,
making sure no one had symptoms. Only on
Day 14 could she begin thinking about her
wedding with joy. “My husband and I
needed those two weeks to pass so the
memories weren’t tainted by anything ter-
rible,” she said. “It was a long two weeks.”
Some couples are turning to waivers to
protect themselves from liability in case of
an outbreak.
The wedding planner in Arkansas said
she used her clients’ fears about liability to
drive them toward more protective meas-
ures. “I tell them, ‘Listen, we don’t know
where liability is going to fall, and you are
the host of this event,’ ” she said. “You want
to say at the end of the day you did every-
thing you could possible to keep your guests
safe.”
Ms. Bett said, “I tell my clients, ‘If you re-
ally feel you have to push this form, why are
we having this wedding in the first place?’ ”
Then there are the newlyweds who feel
little responsibility for wedding guests get-
ting infected.
Ms. Chism’s stepson, a 27-year-old engi-
neer in Houston who didn’t want to be
named because of the topic’s sensitivity, be-
lieves his guests exercised free will when
attending his wedding.
“My wife felt bad and said, ‘I feel like it’s
all our fault,’ ” he recalled. “I said: ‘Look,
they took a chance on coming, they knew
the risk. People could have come or they
didn’t have to come.’ ”
When asked whether he would make the
same decision again, his answer was abso-
lutely: “The day was very memorable, it felt
like a normal wedding. Minus the part
about people getting sick.”Precautions or Not, Virus Remains a Worry at Weddings
Infections have spread at a
number of celebrations, large
and small, across the country.
By ALYSON KRUEGERSEPTEMBER DAWN BOTTOMS/THE NEW YORK TIMESSocial distancing is the norm
for most weddings, but not all.
Some brides and grooms
require guests to sign liability
waivers upon arrival.Alice Muglia and
William Russo had
been running in the
same political circles
since 2012, when she was working
for the re-election of President
Barack Obama and he was work-
ing in the White House for Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
who is now the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee.
“We were always a part of the
crowd,” Ms. Muglia said with a
sigh, “but it was never just us.”
These days, Ms. Muglia and Mr.
Russo, both 33, are working for
the presidential campaign of Mr.
Biden — formally known as “Bi-
den for President” — she in dele-
gates operations and he as a
deputy communications director.
They met on the floor of the
McCormick Center in Chicago on
election night in 2012. Since that
time, Mr. Russo noted, “we each
developed an overlapping group
of friends and became friendly,
but not close, in the intervening
years.”
Once the Obama presidency
ended in 2017, effectively ending
Ms. Muglia’s job as a protocol
officer at the Defense Department,
as well as Mr. Russo’s job as the
adviser to the deputy secretary of
the State Department, they began
seeing more of each other. They
went to ballgames with friends.
Both traveled to Minneapolis for a
mutual friend’s wedding and took
weekend trips with friends.
and very attractive to me.”
In July 2018, after a mutual
friend’s birthday party at a bar in
Washington, they finally turned a
romantic corner.
At the end of a celebratory
night, they walked back down 14th
Street toward their respective
homes. Once they parted ways,
and Ms. Muglia was back in her
apartment, she sent Mr. Russo a
text: “You should ask me out
sometime, just us.”
Six days later, on July 26 2018,
they were on a first date, just the
two of them, at a French bistro in
Washington.
They were married July 26 at
the bride’s family’s summer home
in Chilmark, Mass. Samuel L.
Muglia, the bride’s brother, re-
ceived temporary permission
from Massachusetts to officiate.
Before the coronavirus out-
break, the couple had intended to
marry on Aug. 22 before more
than 200 guests at the same fam-
ily home in Chilmark.
Not only did their wedding date
change, but the number of attend-
ees tumbled to seven, including
the couple’s parents, Elizabeth M.
Russo of Exton, Pa., and Ellen F.
Muglia and Richard L. Muglia of
Greenwich, Conn. The couple said
Mr. Russo’s father, the late William
J. Russo, was surely there in spirit.
“We’re just doing family,” Ms.
Muglia said.
VINCENT M. MALLOZZIDuring that time, Ms. Muglia,
who graduated cum laude from
Colgate, and Mr. Russo, who grad-
uated from the University of
Delaware and received a master’s
degree in environment, develop-
ment and policy from the Univer-
sity of Sussex in Brighton, Eng-
land, began learning more about
each other.
“Bill is so incredibly smart and
he loves his family so much, and
as somebody who really loves
their family as well, it was just an
incredible fit for me,” Ms. Muglia
said. “He’s also really a lot of fun
to be around.”
Mr. Russo said that he “greatly
admired the depths of passion that
Alice has for so many things,
including her family.”
“She is an incredible cook and
an incredible baker,” he added.
“Getting to observe her more and
watch the energetic way she puts
herself into projects, both big and
small, is incredibly impressive,Alice Muglia,
William Russo
. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................
These Biden Aides Already Picked Their Running Mates
JOCELYN FILLEYCaroline Anderson
and Robert Parisot
can point to the day
they almost met in- They were both students at
Harvard Law School at the time,
and Ms. Anderson, who was in
her third year, was participating
in Harvard Law School’s Ames
Moot Court Competition, a com-
petition for appellate brief writing
and advocacy. Mr. Parisot, who
was a first-year law student, had
been assigned to attend as part of
his classes.
“It would have been this great
meeting, because I was arguing in
front of Justice Sonia Sotomayor
and our team won,” said Ms.
Anderson, 34, who goes by Carly.
But Mr. Parisot, 31, skipped the
competition to study, and they
both graduated without ever
having crossed paths.
Instead, the couple met in
Washington in June 2017, on the
dating app the League. They had
their first date at a bar and imme-
diately hit it off.
“I quickly learned that Carly
was not only beautiful, but also
brilliant and magnetic and one of
the funniest people I’ve ever
met,” Mr. Parisot said. “By our
second date, when she walked
into that bar, I thought she was
way out of my league.”
In November, Ms. Anderson
invited Mr. Parisot to meet her
family for the first time at their
large Thanksgiving celebration in
Highland Park, Ill. Mr. Parisot
grandmother to marry him al-
most eight decades earlier. The
thoughtfulness of Mr. Parisot’s
proposal was not lost on Ms.
Anderson.
“It signified that Rob really
understands what’s important to
me,” Ms. Anderson said. “It really
drove home to me how thoughtful
he is, and that’s been true our
entire relationship.”
The couple were planning to
get married at the Drake Hotel in
Chicago on March 28, with about
265 guests. Because of the coro-
navirus, they had to reschedule
their wedding plans, and were
married Aug. 1 at the Exmoor
Country Club in Highland Park,
with Rabbi Rachel Weiss officiat-
ing. The couple had a second
ceremony for the groom’s family
on Aug. 8 at La Bella Vista, a
wedding venue in Waterbury,
Conn. Even with the change of
plans, Ms. Anderson and Mr.
Parisot are excited about entering
a new chapter of their lives.
“He’s the kindest man I know,”
Ms. Anderson said about Mr.
Parisot. “I think he’s super smart
and thoughtful and engaging, and
I think he’s going to be an incredi-
ble father if we’re lucky enough to
have kids.”
“It’s been some of the most
difficult times personally for me
because of external circum-
stances,” Mr. Parisot said, “but
Carly has also made it the best
few years of my life.”
EMMA GRILLOwas so committed to making a
good first impression, he memo-
rized a 55-person family tree
ahead of time.
When Mr. Parisot visited his
family a few weeks later, his
sisters teased him about how
often he referenced Ms. Ander-
son.
“I was obviously smitten by
that point,” Mr. Parisot said.
In January 2019, the couple
moved to Chicago for work and to
be closer to Ms. Anderson’s fam-
ily. Ms. Anderson is the senior
counsel for competition and
global governance at Boeing in
Chicago, and Mr. Parisot is a
corporate associate at DLA Piper,
a multinational law firm in Chi-
cago.
In April 2019, Mr. Parisot took
Ms. Anderson to a lily pond in
Lincoln Park in Chicago, where he
asked her to marry him. It wasn’t
just a beautiful location — it was
the same park where Ms. Ander-
son’s grandfather had asked herCaroline Anderson,
Robert Parisot. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................
At Thanksgiving, Bringing the Whole Family Tree
NANCY BEALE/STUDIO THIS ISWEDDINGS