Where's the Raw Bar?

Sunday I had lunch with a friend who had attended her first COVID-19 wedding the night before. Originally planned for St Barths, the wedding was relocated to the pool deck at the Bride and Groom's private estate overlooking the Navesink River. She described the wedding as "the most gorgeous wedding I have ever seen" I'm trying not to take that personally since she definitely attended my wedding, but I digress, and truthfully, I saw the pictures, including the one of the DJ wearing his mask, and it was breathtaking.

"The only thing I didn't get was the food!" She went on to explain that while the food was good, it was a cocktail style dinner service, and there weren't any of the traditional stations you would typically see at a high end wedding, "Where was the raw bar?" she quipped. I asked her if there was sushi, another staple of weddings in the NY metropolitan area, and there was, but there wasn't a chef there making the rolls. She hadn't thought anything of it, assuming that the prepackaged rolls like you might purchase at one of the Groom's chain of grocery stores was a clever nod to his business, not a sanitary precaution.

For those proceeding with their wedding planning during the COVID pandemic, the fate of the cocktail hour is one of many unknowns, but it's arguably the most uncertain. You can creatively space seats for a ceremony, group guests by household and distance your tables for a reception, and get creative with dancing and entertainment, but the whole purpose of the cocktail hour is to gather. Guests are packed in a small space, offered passed hors d'oeuvres on reused platters that move from guest to guest, pick from large stations of plentiful food that has been preset long before guests arrive, and get drinks from bars with exposed glassware, liquor, mixers, and garnish that are all prepared by bare hands well within six feet of the waiting guest. Even if you did require all of your guests to wear masks while in attendance, you can't eat or drink with a mask on, so how do you proceed? Can you?

Most people in the wedding industry are suggesting that cocktail hour may just be nixed for the foreseeable future. For many cocktail hour enthusiasts, I'm looking at you NJ, this is blasphemy, this decadent hour is the highlight of the evening which explains the rise in "cocktail format" receptions over the past few years.

So now what? If a room needs to be flipped between ceremony and reception what do you do with the guests in between? Is there a way to keep guests and staff safe when social distancing is not possible? Do bars need to have plexi sneeze guards like you see at the register in the super market? Will hearing the bartender or server be even more difficult over loud music in a crowded room if they're wearing a mask? Can you come up with a way to creatively present hors d'oeuvres to keep them unsullied? Are family style french fries and brussel sprouts a thing of the past? These are all questions and solutions that have been posed to me over the past few weeks. If you have thoughts or better yet if you've been to a wedding in the age of COVID and have suggestions based on what worked, or didn't I'd love to hear them! If you're planning a wedding and have questions, I'd love to help you answer them. Comment below!!