- A San Francisco couple was married Saturday in an empty church with only immediate family and some friends present.
- The photos of the wedding, with one showing faces of the church’s regular parishioners taped to the pews, quickly gained traction online.
- The images offer surreal documentation of what it’s like to get married amid such strange and unprecedented times as during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
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For one Bay Area couple nearly a year into their engagement, the wedding must go on – global health crisis or not.
Emily and Parris Khachi were married Saturday in a church in San Francisco, one of many cities under a regionwide shelter-in-place order to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19.
Photos of their wedding, taken by photographer Vicens Forns, quickly went viral online as people were given a surreal glimpse at what it’s like to be married in an empty church during a viral outbreak and a statewide shutdown.
Here’s what it was like for the couple.
Parris and Emily Khachi were engaged for a year before getting married at St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco on Saturday.
Once the shelter-in-place order went into effect, the couple grappled with whether or not to move forward with their big day.
Source: SF Gate
"Neither of us wanted to postpone indefinitely since it's hard to figure out when things will feel right again," the couple told ABC7News.
Source: ABC7News
Regular religious services and other large gatherings are prohibited during the regionwide shelter-in-place order.
So church leaders at St. Ignacius have been regularly live streaming services for parishioners.
They did the same for the couple, live-streaming their wedding in real-time to the many friends and family members unable to attend due to the shelter-in-place order.
Source: SF Gate
The photos of people taped to the pews are, in fact, regular churchgoers — not family and friends that couldn't attend — in an effort to create some semblance of normalcy for the church.
Source: ABC7News
The couple and few attendees practiced social distancing during the ceremony, and although the wedding took place under atypical circumstances, the Khachis said they felt "very loved."
Source: ABC7News
"In a way it allowed a wedding to be brought back to basics, in sickness and in health and in pandemic," the couple told ABC7News.
The couple is also happy with how the photos of their wedding turned out.
Source: ABC7News
According to ABC7News, the couple is now planning a "staycation-honeymoon" while hunkered down along with the rest of the region's residents.
Source: ABC7News