When couples are planning their weddings, some brides dream of seeing their big day covered in the newspapers. But probably not the way that Irene Sanzone and John Fuchs wound up on the pages of the New York Post. Their relatively small wedding was held yesterday at a church in Staten Island with approximately 25 guests in attendance. Of course, they did it after the city was supposed to be on lockdown for all nonessential activity and gatherings of more than ten people were banned.
This led to them being blasted in the newspapers and even by the archdiocese of their church. When they came out the doors as man and wife, I wonder if people were throwing rice, birdseed or rotten tomatoes?
Here comes the bride — coronavirus be damned.
A Staten Island couple threw caution — and a slew of dire government warnings — to the wind Sunday by getting married in front of nearly two dozen people, several of them elderly, at a local Catholic church.
Irene Sanzone and John Fuchs’ afternoon nuptials at Our Lady of Pity Church in the Bulls Head section of the borough raised the wrath of the Archdiocese of New York, which oversees Staten Island’s parishes.
“The wedding was not in keeping with archdiocesan guidelines and should not have been held,’’ archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling told The Post.
A member of their own wedding party gave quotes to the press saying that the couple was putting the entire community in danger, including their own guests, many of whom were elderly. But someone was clearly even more upset than the member of the party because somebody called the cops. Three uniformed officers showed up at the wedding along with their supervisor. They spoke to a few guests in the vestibule but reportedly didn’t do anything else.
Knowing what the rules are for sheltering in place, social distancing and all the rest, I suppose it’s easy to see how the public (particularly New Yorkers) might jump on the shame train and call this couple out. And given the serious nature of the crisis, I suppose I can’t blame them.
But at the same time, weddings – particularly church weddings as opposed to visits to the Justice of the Peace – take a lot of time and planning. (Or at least so I’m told. Our wedding just appeared to happen almost as if by magic with almost no participation on my part beyond writing a few checks.) The couple was probably planning this for the better part of a year at least. Reservations were made for the rehearsal dinner, the reception. People probably planned trips from out of town to attend.
After all of that, I suppose I can understand how it would be a big ask to get them to cancel it when all of this was no doubt on the calendar long before anyone had ever heard of the coronavirus. Further, the guests obviously made the decision to show up anyway. I doubt anyone was forcing them into the church at gunpoint. (Though this is Staten Island we’re talking about so that can’t be ruled out definitively.) Reading further into the report, it says that there were basically only three guests per pew inside the church and they were keeping their distance from each other.
Was this the wisest thing to do under the circumstances? Probably not. But should the young couple be publicly shamed in this way over it? I don’t know. I’m just finding it difficult to get too worked up over this and call for their heads on a platter. It’s their wedding. And with the coronavirus stalking everyone’s steps in New York these days and the media obsessing over to the exclusion of almost everything else, things have gotten quite depressing around here. Perhaps a small ray of sunshine like this couple tying the knot and starting their lives together was what some of us needed.
