Nearly half of the 80-plus people who attended an Ohio wedding tested positive for COVID-19 after, including the newlyweds who had to cut their honeymoon short
- Anthony and Mikayla Bishop got married in Blue Ash, Ohio, on October 31, before 83 guests.
- Nearly half the attendees got sick with the coronavirus after the event, including three of the newlyweds' grandparents.
- The couple also got sick with COVID-19, and had to cut short their honeymoon due to their illness.
- The couple told local news station WLWT they feel a tremendous amount of guilt over the wedding, and are hoping other couples can learn from their experience.
A wedding held in Ohio last month now appears to have been a super-spreader event, with nearly half the 83 guests testing positive for COVID-19 afterwards, the WLWT news station reported.
Newlyweds Anthony and Mikayla Bishop spoke to the outlet about their wedding, saying they hoped it would serve as a warning to other couples looking to get married during the pandemic.
"Weddings are definitely scary right now. I didn't think that almost half of our wedding guests were gonna get sick," Mikayla told the news station.
"You're in the moment. You're having fun. You don't think about COVID anymore."
In total, 32 people who attended the October 31 wedding in Blue Ash tested positive for the coronavirus, including three of the couple's grandparents, according to WLWT.
The couple also tested positive for COVID-19, and had to cut short their honeymoon to North Carolina due to the illness, WLWT said.
The Bishops told WLWT that they feel a tremendous amount of guilt for hosting the event, especially over their grandparents getting sick. Two of the grandparents who got sick even had to go to the emergency room for their COVID-19 symptoms, they said.
The couple said they provided face masks and hand sanitizer at the venue, but that few guests took advantage of these protections.
Mikayla said one of the most jarring moments was when she was walking down the aisle and noticed that almost no one was wearing a face mask.
"My big moment honestly was right when the ceremony started and the doors opened and both my parents walked me down the aisle. The first thing I see is I see everyone's face. And that's when I realized, wow. Nobody's wearing a mask," she told WLWT. "I'm walking down the aisle. We can't do anything now."
Mikayla also said she believes the dance floor may have been one of the biggest factors in causing the coronavirus cluster at their wedding.
"Everybody's in each other's face and there's no masks," she told WLWT.
Bizarrely, Mikayla said that her and her husband's grandparents were the only ones to wear face masks the whole time, and stay away from the dance floor — but that even that didn't prevent them from getting sick.