It’s no understatement to say that planning a wedding is hard, but during a global health crisis? Well, that’s been pretty impossible. But one woman is now stuck between a rock and a hard place after she told her wedding guests that vaccines would be required to attend her wedding — and now her family is refusing to attend.
The whole thing came to blows when the Reddit poster and her fiancé announced they’d be requiring vaccines as well as testing for guests at their wedding.
For her fiancé’s family, this was sort of NBD. They were all vaccinated and supported the move wholeheartedly, she explained in a post on r/wedding.
Her family is a whole other story.
“My family is beyond mad at me and won’t talk to me,” the original poster wrote. “They think I’m the worst person ever and unfair. They think I’m not respecting everyone’s wishes.”
But what about the OP’s wishes? It’s her wedding, after all.
The OP has one sibling who flat-out refuses to get vaccinated “and my parents and other siblings are trying to negotiate negative tests and quarantine,” she explained.
But the OP has a really good reason why she wants to stick to her guns: “If someone died from my wedding we wouldn’t forgive ourselves.”
Her family argued that the OP shouldn’t take responsibility for someone else if they get sick.
“This whole pandemic my family has thought we take COVID too seriously,” she wrote. “It’s so hard. I’m so upset. My dad even told me he would have an issue attending my wedding if my sibling wasn’t there.”
The OP has cried herself to sleep from her family’s harsh words.
“They don’t support my stance, they’re just making me the bad person,” she explained. “They think I’m being ridiculous and don’t care to see my point of view.”
Many people in the comments section encouraged her to stick to her guns.
"You’re doing the right thing to keep yourself and your guests safe," one commenter told her. "At this point, vaccines plus testing is just what needs to happen to have a safe event—you want to have as many layers of protection as possible so nobody gets sick from attending, or if anyone does, you’ve done everything you can to prevent it. This situation sucks but it’s your wedding, and your rules."
"This is something I refuse to back down on," another commenter agreed. "Like you, we are getting some push back from a handful of our guests about being vaxxed and tested for our wedding. It’s just smart. All it takes is one person to infect others. Likewise, we’d feel horrible if there was a COVID spread due to being slack on this. Stick to it!"
While a third commenter put it this way: "I support you in wanting a safe and healthy event! Do not bend to peer pressure, it is not worth the risk! Unfortunately, there are CONSEQUENCES to the 'choice' of not getting the vaccine. Consequence 1 is more likely to get/die from COVID, but that isnt the ONLY consequence, only the most serious– other consequence is not going to stuff– when you choose to not get the vaccine you are also choosing that lifestyle, which means no large gatherings, etc. Not getting the vaccine isnt a 'free for all'/'nothing should affect me because I said so.'"
While other people thought the OP wasn't making sense.
"I’m vaxxed and I tested positive this morning," one person wrote. "There’s no reason to require them and not [just] a negative test / quarantine."
"I know I’ll get downvoted, but I’m my opinion it really doesn’t make sense to only allow vaccinated people rather than just asking people to get a test," someone else agreed. "You can still get COVID after getting the vaccine, it just makes you less likely to be hospitalized. If you have natural immunity you are even less likely to be hospitalized than if you got the vaccine. More so if you have both. I personally think it’s quite narcissistic to ask others to get the vaccine for your wedding. A negative COVID test should suffice. But hey, it’s your wedding. You do you. Just wanted to give a different perspective for you to consider."
"You can't force others to get vaccinated unfortunately," someone else added. "Besides, we have seen that being vaccinated doesn't mean you can't have COVID. Personally I'd let them come if they quarantine and can produce a negative test result. Otherwise you'll just have to live with the fact that they won't come to the wedding."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, getting vaccinated can "lower your risk of getting and spreading the virus that causes COVID-19. Vaccines can also help prevent serious illness and death."
But people who've been vaccinated can still be asymptomatic carriers and not realize they're sick. You can also have a false negative test result, vaccinated or not, NPR reported. Meaning, if you're sick, you can still transmit the virus to other people, which would be bad news for the OP's guests who don't have their shots. For everyone's sake, vaccinated and tested is the best way to keep people healthy, even if it means letting certain people in her family down.
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