It has been a wild ride to plan this wedding throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, the weeks leading up to the wedding have brought great news on this front.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released new guidance for fully vaccinated people (14 days after the second shot) which is extremely encouraging. As of May 16, the CDC says "if you are fully vaccinated, you can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic" (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html). We are pleased to learn that 90%+ of our wedding guests will be fully vaccinated. We are also pleased to see cases plummet in Charlottesville and Albemarle County specifically. As of May 19th, 73% of residents have received at least one dose, with 61% fully vaccinated. As a result, we have seen an average of 1 case per day for the past 7 days.

The state of Virginia is also lifting all COVID-19 restrictions on May 28th (https://dailyprogress.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/va-removing-mask-mandate-for-fully-vaccinated-people-lifting-all-covid-restrictions-may-28/article_07dd2a2f-c29f-5ee5-a9bf-8edd84997b0f.html). While we were finalizing our plans, there had been a cap of 100 guests for weddings. Despite the lifted restrictions, we are still keeping our event at less than 100 people. While we are sad not to be able to celebrate with everyone, we felt that abiding by the 100-person restriction was the safest option.

While life is returning to normal, there are still a few COVID-19 considerations. If you are not fully vaccinated (again, 14 days after the second shot), we kindly ask you to wear a mask throughout the weekend.

We are working with our venue to enact all the necessary COVID precautions (including distancing, safe food preparation, ...) to make our event comfortable for everyone.

We encourage all of our guests traveling to wear a mask while in transit. The CDC writes that even fully vaccinated people "will still be required to wear a mask on planes, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation traveling into, within, or out of the United States, and in U.S. transportation hubs such as airports and stations."

We recognize that people have varying levels of comfort regardless of the CDC's guidance. If you're fully-vaccinated, we completely welcome you to wear a mask throughout the weekend if you wish.

Thank you for bearing with us throughout these past months as we've navigated the uncertainty of this pandemic. At some points we thought this wedding would have to scale down to just 10 people, so we are thrilled to welcome so many of our friends and family on June 5th! To those we are not able to include in our weekend, we are sorry not to have you with us but we are excited to celebrate with you later on when we meet again. Please see some below links for further CDC/vaccine information.

Thank you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/us/cdc-mask-guidelines-vaccinated.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/14/996879305/confused-by-cdcs-latest-mask-guidance-heres-what-weve-learned

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/health/cdc-masks-vaccines-variants.html

https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/albemarle-repeals-local-covid-restrictions/article_e54f9d2a-b8fd-11eb-91a7-8b97f99f5827.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/blue-ridge/brhd-localities/