How To Avoid Toxic Mindsets in a Coronavirus Wedding

This is the future of weddings. Beware: ignorance knows no boundaries.

When your close friend says, “how can you not come? I rely on you,” it is difficult not to attend a wedding despite the pandemic’s lethal consequences. I wore my mask alongside with my fears and went to a COVID-19 wedding. While I was expecting everyone to behave cautiously, they seemed to return to normality so quickly.

Once again, I witnessed humanity betraying its own kind.

Weddings were canceled with other social events due to the virus unfolding around the planet. At the last minute, the restraint ceased, and my friend decided to organize her wedding. I was a bridesmaid again, not knowing what to do while the bride-to-be kept dictating me what was next.

It was scary to get prepared for a wedding while you avoided your favorite coffee shops. It was ridiculous to attend a social event while your education was suspended for the risk. It made no sense while the virus was hovering above us after having caused 550, 384 deaths.

But, if you feel obliged to love and support your friend, you will be the next witness, bridesmaid, or wedding guest. Here is how the future weddings may look like and what to avoid.

1. Uncles Saying “Nothing Would Happen To Me”

If you grow up in a patriarchal culture, you know these older men, who think that God bestows them with an antidote, making them immune to outside threats. The invisible force may physically take these guys under its protection, but their brains surely belong to the exceptions.

While coronavirus poses a threat mostly to the old population, the dance floor will be filled with male relatives, wanting to hold each other’s hands for halay or other meaningless traditional dances despite all the warnings to maintain social distance. I think there are some repressed homosexual desires here. I wish Freud were here.

To avoid: The wedding organizations place the tables to protect social distance. You will have a significant place of your own to dance however you wish — in a small group with your family or close friends. By ignoring the dance floor and wearing a damn mask, you can avoid the ignorance and danger that these old guys pose to the world.

2. Parents Saying “We Have Only One Daughter”

You know Propertius’s famous phrase, that is, “true love knows no boundaries and measures,” don’t you? Well, I’d change it to “true ignorance knows no boundaries and measures.”

The greatest wish of most parents nowadays (damn Baby Boomers) is to see their children getting married. Since their generation’s insurance for a better life was marriage (there is a reason that we call them ‘Baby Boomers’), they assume that their daughter will always be happy only if she gets married.

Therefore, weddings become the happiest days of the bride and groom’s parents. Moreover, every little detail is organized according to parents’ wishes, and hence every rule can be bent for them.

Although wearing a mask is obligatory in weddings (it is the least we can do), my friend’s parents found a court friend to break the rules. There were no authorities that patrol around the wedding and impose a penalty on those wearing no masks. In the last six months, I had never seen that many people together without masks.

When you encounter such a scene and talk to the parents in chief, they will respond: “We have only one daughter. We should do our best for a perfect wedding.” They are right, but what is aesthetically best for their eyes is the worst for others’ health.

To avoid: Try not responding because nobody likes a rebel at a wedding although you have a cause. Wear your damn mask and sit silently. Also, alcohol helps if you drink.

3. Rebels Without a Cause Saying “God Protects Us”

When a social event presents itself, it is impossible not to encounter hypocrites. They are the ones using religion or religious phrases for their benefits.

Some wedding avenues do not permit alcohol consumption. But, whenever you attend a wedding in one of those avenues, you see tipsy men while dancing (and still insisting on holding their hands). They bring alcohol illegally, drink excessively (because they have a right to have fun, right?), and disturb other guests.

It was unbelievable to witness the same thing at a wedding during coronavirus. After a specific time, I saw a group of people sharing the same glass of vodka, laughing loudly and ignoring blindly the danger of their attitudes: a few people coming from different households and sharing the same glass.

When you warn them, however, their response is: “Weddings are sacred. God protects us.”

I am not a religious person. But, if there is a creative God having created this immense universe and its creatures, I’m sure she is intelligent enough not to protect those dummies. Like Isaac Asimov puts it;

“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”

If the pandemic has brought us to this point, I cannot imagine what will cure our disgrace.

To avoid: I am not sure what to suggest. There is not a medicine that makes you immune to foolish ignorance. You can look at the bright sides of the wedding. Also, please do not share the glass with them. And wear your damn mask.

Takeaway,

Coronavirus is the result of irresponsible human actions towards the environment. You think we will behave more responsibly, using a tiny part of our brains. Yet, my experiences from this wedding show me that we are the worst animals that stepped into the world, and we are beyond hope of salvation.

We have seen how dangerous COVID-19 may be, how many deaths it may cause, and how much pain it may inflict on those who lose their loved ones.

We have been stuck in our houses for months, longing for the sunlight, and not knowing what to expect.

After all, if we keep repeating our careless actions, it is nothing but a self-annihilation.

Perhaps, to annihilate ourselves will be the solution because nothing else will cure us and lead us to reconsider the consequences of our actions.

If you love your life, care about other people, and want to behave responsively, know that there will be ignorant people everywhere, not desiring to educate themselves. If you have to attend a social event, wear your damn mask, and sit silently till the end.

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” — Martin Luther King Jr.