Update (2/17/21): Today, I went through and double-checked the process detailed below since it’s been a few weeks since I first published this story. I was curious if anything had changed. Has the Oregon state government and/or Oregon Health Authority (OHA) provided easier-to-access health and safety guidance around weddings in Oregon?
The answer is no, they have not. And thus, the two requests in this article remain the same:
Oregon state government, please add “weddings” as a category on the “Find the Status of Activities in Your County” search bar on the Oregon governor’s COVID resource website, coronavirus.oregon.gov.
Oregon Health Authority, please add “weddings” on the OHA’s “Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart.”
Why do those two requests matter? Because when people don’t know what’s legal, they can’t even begin to talk about what’s safe.
Don’t believe that it’s that hard to answer the question “Can I legally have a wedding in Oregon right now?” Let me show you my work. Today, I replicated the same process I did when I first published this story on January 14, 2021.
First, I checked the guidance provided by OHA
Specifically, I went to OHA’s COVID website, scrolled down to “Guidance Overview Chart,” and looked at the PDF that appears when I click the blue button that says “Guidance Overview Chart.”
This button leads to a PDF titled “Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart.” The PDF has multiple colors, green (lower risk) to red (extreme risk). I am not linking to the PDF here because the PDF changes and I want you to look at the most recent version as provided by OHA.
As of this writing, you will not see the word “weddings” on that PDF. This has been the case since I first began this research in January 2021.
Second, I checked the Oregon governor’s COVID resource website
Specifically, I went to coronavirus.oregon.gov and clicked “What’s open in my county?” (either the yellow button on the homepage or the white font in the upper right corner).
This took me to the search tool “Find the Status of Activities in Your County.” Here I selected a county (I picked Multnomah County) and an activity.
As of this writing, weddings are not an activity. This has also been true for as long as I have been tracking this story (so, since January 2021).
I can also confirm that a key process I detailed in my original January 2021 is still accurate.
This process: I individually searched every activity that I thought a wedding might be. Of the 32 available activities, I chose the four that made the most sense to me in relation to a wedding:
Bars, Restaurants, Breweries, & Wineries
Churches, Synagogues, & Mosques (though, of course, not all weddings are religious)
Social & At-Home Gatherings (Indoor)
Social & At-Home Gatherings (Outdoor)
I also added “Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, Cemeteries” based on a tip I got a couple weeks ago. (More about that tip is in the the update below dated “1/22/21”).
Of these five activities, the word “wedding” appears on two documents that take multiple steps to access. These documents are:
The PDF titled “Guidance FAQs Eating and Drinking Establishments (update 02-12-2021)” under the category of “Bars, Restaurants, Breweries, & Wineries.” Click the option “See FAQs for Eating and Drinking Establishments - FAQ” to pull up this PDF.
The PDF titled “Guidance FAQs Faith Institutions, Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, Cemeteries” under the category “Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, & Cemeteries.” Click the option “See FAQs for Faith Institutions, Funeral Homes, Mortuaries & Cemeteries - FAQ” to pull up this PDF.
This information is identical to where the information was in mid-January 2021 though additional wedding-related guidance has been added to the PDF “Guidance FAQs Faith Institutions, Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, Cemeteries.”
I do not directly link to either PDF above because the links won’t update when OHA swaps in new PDFs. This means that if I linked to the PDFs, the links would send you to PDFs that may have old information, depending on when you read this article.
See how complicated this is?
Now imagine doing it as a couple planning a wedding or a wedding vendor trying to run a business and you understand why this is a problem.
People get fatigued. When they get fatigued, they often make up their own rules, if only because they feel they have no other option. And those rules may not prioritize health and safety.
This is a bad thing during a pandemic. It is a particularly bad thing when we are talking about a gathering like a wedding that by its very nature, gets people together in-person.
***
Update (1/22/21): Last weekend, I spoke to journalist Galen Ettlin of KGW about the article below. Mr. Ettlin then reached out to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA). OHA replied to Mr. Ettlin’s request on Friday 1/22.
For the question “What guidance do weddings follow?,” OHA directed Mr. Ettlin to OHA’s eating and drinking FAQ. This is the same FAQ mentioned below (“Reopening Guidance FAQs Eating and Drinking Establishments”).
For the question “What guidance would weddings follow that take place in faith institutions?,” OHA directed Mr. Ettlin to OHA’s faith institution FAQ (“Guidance FAQs Faith Institutions, Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, Cemeteries”).
This FAQ, which is not mentioned in the original story below, says the following in regards to weddings:
Weddings that take place at a faith institution must comply with the Indoor Entertainment Establishments guidance for the designated risk level for the county where the faith institution is located.
What does this all mean? It means that what I wrote below is still accurate: Health and safety regulations for weddings in Oregon remain incredibly hard to find. The only difference is that when I did my original research below, I didn’t find OHA's faith institution FAQ (“Guidance FAQs Faith Institutions, Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, Cemeteries”).
This is because the faith institution FAQ only renders on coronavirus.oregon.gov if you search the activity category “Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, & Cemeteries.” I did not search that activity category when trying to find information about weddings.
Instead, I opted for the activity category “Churches, Synagogues, & Mosques,” and the faith institution FAQ does not, as of this writing, currently appear under that category on coronavirus.oregon.gov. Only the faith institution guidance PDF does.
The faith institutions FAQ from OHA appears under the activity “Funeral Homes, Mortuaries, & Cemeteries” but not the activity “Churches, Synagogues, & Mosques” (pictured below) on the coronavirus resource site provided by the office of the governor in Oregon, coronavirus.oregon.gov.
Original story (1/14/21): Last week, I had a deeply troubling phone call with one of Oregon's biggest venues.
This venue said that they could currently host weddings of 50 people outdoors. This was a very different interpretation of the same information that I have been reading from the Oregon governor’s office about health and safety regulations for events hosted during the COVID pandemic. (I detail the past eight months of those regulations in this article, which I first published in May 2020 and have updated regularly ever since.)
When I spoke to the venue last week, my understanding was that a wedding in Oregon was classified as a “social gathering” and as such followed the COVID regulations specific to a social gathering for that county’s specific risk level.
Right now, Oregon ranks county risk levels as extreme, high, moderate, or lower risk. Those levels are reviewed and reassigned every two weeks; the next such announcement from Oregon Governor Kate Brown is scheduled for Tuesday, January 26.
In an Oregon county designated as “extreme risk,” a social gathering can have no more than six people from no more than two households gather together indoors or outdoors, per the Oregon Health Authority (OHA).
The venue I spoke with is in an extreme risk county, but they didn’t think weddings were classified as social gatherings. They thought weddings had the same rules as restaurants because they are a venue that also provides in-house catering. In an extreme risk county, an eating and drinking establishment can currently have 50 people outdoors, zero people indoors.
This conversation with the venue — which, I want to point out, was in no way ill-natured — led me to finally ask people in authority a question that I, a professional wedding planner in Oregon, have been trying to answer for months.
Is it legal to have a wedding in Oregon right now?
What Oregon’s COVID resource website says
You would think this question would be easy to answer by this point in the pandemic. We are, after all, approaching the one-year mark of when the first case of COVID was reported in Oregon.
Unfortunately, the word “wedding” is extremely challenging to find on the main COVID resource website provided by the Oregon governor’s office, coronavirus.oregon.gov.
If you are unfamiliar with coronavirus.oregon.gov, there is a tool on the website called “What’s open in my county?”
Where I found “What’s open in my county?” on the coronavirus resource site provided by the office of the governor in Oregon, coronavirus.oregon.gov.
You click “What’s open in my county?” and are presented with a search bar called “Find the Status of Activities in Your County.” On one side of the search bar, you pick the county that you’re interested in. On the other side, you pick the activity.
What the search tool “Find the Status of Activities in Your County” looks like on the coronavirus resource site provided by the office of the governor in Oregon, coronavirus.oregon.gov. This is the page you land on after clicking “What’s open in my county?”
“Weddings” are not currently listed as an activity.
This is the dropdown menu of activities that populates on the coronavirus resource site provided by the office of the governor in Oregon, coronavirus.oregon.gov.
Because this is the case, I individually searched each activity that I thought a wedding might be. Of the 32 available activities, I chose the four that made the most sense to me in relation to a wedding:
Bars, Restaurants, Breweries, & Wineries
Churches, Synagogues, & Mosques (though, of course, not all weddings are religious)
Social & At-Home Gatherings (Indoor)
Social & At-Home Gatherings (Outdoor)
I searched each of these activities. This involves picking a county, picking an activity, and then scrolling down to see which PDFs populated given my search query.
I only found the word “wedding” once. It was in a PDF under the category of “Bars, Restaurants, Breweries, & Wineries.” (Not where I would have expected it, either.) The name of the PDF was also a surprise: “Reopening Guidance FAQs Eating and Drinking Establishments.”
I am a professional wedding planner whose safety and livelihood depends on finding this information. I’ll invest however much time it takes because I have no other choice and because I am lucky enough to have a partner who has a regular paycheck and insurance. But a couple? Another small business owner? Would they have the extra three to five hours it took me to research this question? Would they even know where to start?
As for the information itself, here’s how the word “wedding” appears in the PDF I found:
“Q: What guidance do weddings follow? In the extreme risk level, can an eating and drinking establishment host a wedding outdoors for 50 people?
A4: Weddings are considered indoor or outdoor entertainment and are required to follow either the indoor entertainment establishments guidance or the outdoor entertainment establishments guidance. In a county that is in the extreme risk level, eating and drinking establishments cannot host indoor private events as those would be considered indoor entertainment.”
On first read, this makes it sound like, “Yes, you can have your wedding as long as it doesn’t have more than 50 people and is outdoors at a ‘outdoor entertainment establishment’.” However, there are a whole slew of very important questions NOT directly addressed by this statement that have direct implications on people’s health and safety.
These questions are extremely important. However, for the purposes of this article, let’s ignore them. Instead, let’s just ask this one question: Why is it so hard to find the word “weddings” on the premiere COVID resource site provided by my state’s government?
What people talking to the government say
I decided to talk to someone who has spoken with the Oregon government on behalf of the wedding and live events industry during the pandemic.
The main organization I know who is doing this work is Live Events Industry Oregon (LEIO), an organization formed in April 2020 to advocate for more than 4,000 Oregon independent businesses and 35,000-plus workers in the events industry including weddings.
Kim Morrill is the vice president of LEIO. She is also the owner of the wedding planning business Your Perfect Bridesmaid. Morrill sent me a link to the chart that she has been using.
It looked like this:
The chart that Kim Morrill of Live Events Industry Oregon sent me.
That chart is almost identical to the Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart currently posted on the homepage of OHA’S COVID resource page when you click “Guidance Overview Chart” except for one main difference.
On the version of the chart Morrill sent me, “outdoor event spaces” is listed under the category “outdoor entertainment establishments” and “indoor event spaces” is listed under “indoor entertainment establishments.” (We were looking for the term “event spaces” because weddings are (usually) held at event spaces.) This looks like:
A screenshot of the chart Kim Morrill sent me with the two areas we discussed highlighted.
But on the version of the chart currently posted on the homepage of OHA’S COVID resource page, those words “outdoor event spaces” and “indoor event spaces” do not appear under either “indoor entertainment establishments” or “outdoor entertainment establishments.” This looks like:
A screenshot of the Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart posted on the Oregon Health Authority’s COVID website as of publishing.
A screenshot of the Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart posted on the Oregon Health Authority’s COVID website as of publishing.
So what does this mean? Is it legal to have a wedding in Oregon right now or not?
I don’t know. My best guess is that both Morrill and the venue I spoke with last week are correct: Weddings held at event spaces in Oregon follow the rules for event spaces in Oregon, which probably means weddings follow the rules for “indoor entertainment establishments” or “outdoor entertainment establishments.” This would mean that right now, in an extreme risk county in Oregon, you can have a wedding of 50 people outdoors at a professional events space.
But what are the rules if your wedding is hosted at a private residency vs. a professional events space?
I don’t know.
What if your wedding is hosted at a church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship?
I don’t know.
What are the rules if people are traveling for the wedding, particularly if they are traveling out-of-state? Does that violate the travel advisory that has been in place since November 13, 2020?
I don’t know.
Why is it OK to get 50 people together from an untold number of households for a wedding but it is NOT OK to get six people together from two households for a social gathering when we are talking about the same exact county?
I don’t know.
And that’s the point. Morrill and I are highly experienced professionals who are doing our best to sort through the ever-changing rules when really, in my opinion, the fix is simple.
The Oregon government just needs to say the word “wedding.”
Ideally, this word would appear in two places:
First, it would appear on the OHA’s Guidance Chart.
Second, it would appear as an activity option for that search tool “Find the Status of Activities in Your County” that I referenced earlier in this story.
Adding “weddings” as an activity in the activity dropdown isn’t all that weird because there is a precedent for it. Take “Zoos.” That word appears on the OHA Guidance Chart under “Outdoor Entertainment Establishments.”
“Zoos” also appears on the coronavirus.oregon.gov as a listed activity on the “Find the Status of Activities in Your County.” There are a few additional examples like this, too, including outdoor gardens, indoor gyms and fitnesses, and theaters.
Why is this so hard? Why isn't it easier to know what rules for weddings in Oregon are during COVID? Morrill says it’s because the wedding industry — and the live events industry in general — has “a perception problem.”
“I knew this even before COVID, but wedding planners are often dismissed as if we just play with pretty things all day,” she says. “That’s part of the problem. Our industry has a perception problem and [county and state government officials] aren’t listening. They’re not taking us seriously. They don’t understand the financial scope of our industry despite all the statistics. The bottom line is that they don’t respect us as an industry and so we aren’t being invited to the table.”
How other states talk about weddings
Answering the question of “Is it legal to have a wedding right now?” is much easier in other states. In fact, rules for weddings are clearer in the two states that Oregon has most closely aligned throughout the pandemic: Washington State and California.
You may remember that back in April 2020, Washington, California, and Oregon announced the Western States Pact. The Pact’s goal, per the governors of those three states, was to have “an agreement on a shared vision for reopening their economies and controlling COVID-19 into the future.”
While it’s unclear to me how strong the Pact is these days, Washington, California, and Oregon have remained somewhat in lockstep on COVID policy in the eight months since the Pact was announced. A recent example is the tri-state travel advisory that was announced in November.
Unfortunately, compared to California and Washington, Oregon is lagging behind when it comes to making COVID wedding rules clear.
In Washington, the word “wedding” appears front and center on the state’s own version of a COVID resources site, coronavirus.wa.gov. Point no. 8 on the webpage “What’s open?” reads “Wedding and funeral ceremonies are allowed with up to 30 people. Indoor receptions, wakes or similar gatherings remain prohibited.”
In California, wedding-related information is even easier to find. Go to covid19.ca.gov/search, search “wedding,” and the first result is “Are weddings allowed?”
The answer reads: “Yes, but only wedding ceremonies are allowed, not receptions. Wedding ceremonies should follow the guidance for Places of worship or cultural ceremonies. As required by that guidance, social distancing should be practiced by all attendees. Wear masks, wash hands frequently, and keep 6 feet from anyone you don’t live with.” The answer then details the restrictions for ceremonies based on setting or capacity and the specific county’s tier status.
I’m not saying these rules are the gold standard that Oregon needs to follow. Indeed, Washington’s rule to allow 30 people at a wedding but no more than 10 people from two households for an outdoor social gathering is as disturbingly problematic for health and safety as Oregon’s own guidance.
But even though the guidance is imperfect, at least Washington and California make “wedding” easy to find. They don’t only put it on a PDF for an activity — “Bars, Restaurants, Breweries, & Wineries” — that many people don’t immediately associate with a wedding.
This has to change.
What we need
We need “weddings” to be their own activity on coronavirus.oregon.gov.
We need OHA to add “weddings” to the list of activities that it features on its Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart as posted its COVID resources website.
We need “weddings” to be mentioned in some capacity on OHA-provided PDFs like “Guidance FAQs — Gatherings” and “Sector Guidance - Gatherings” so that even if a wedding is not technically classified as a “gathering,” people at least know how it is classified so they can find the appropriate information.
We need clarity.
We need it because every day, I talk to at least one couple who is currently planning an event that might be illegal and also unsafe.
These couples are not bad people. They just want to get married and maybe an 80-guest wedding at an indoor venue in downtown Portland will be safe in August? Or a 200-person wedding at a golf course in October? Or, as one couple wrote me just last week, 50 people in May?
Couples are as confused as I am but unlike me, they have emotional blinders on. This is their wedding we’re talking about. They don’t want to cancel it or reschedule it. To do so has huge emotional ramifications. It also has huge financial ramifications in a country where the average cost of a wedding is $33,900.
Why don’t they just wait? In may cases, it’s not that easy. Often, couples planning a wedding need to make a decision regarding their wedding much sooner than the actual wedding date because there are people to hire, airplane tickets to buy, deposits to pay, the list goes on.
These very understandable circumstances bias us and make an already challenging question — “Can I have my wedding in 2021?” — even more difficult to answer. Unfortunately, when it’s too difficult to figure out where our government stands on a question, we improvise. We make up our own definitions and often those definitions are not in favor of health and safety.
For what it’s worth, I have tried to tell people in authority about this problem. This week, I contacted the governor’s office, OHA, and the state agency Oregon Business. My emails and calls have gone unanswered, which, you know, I get. There are much bigger questions to answer right now.
But this problem is not going away. In the last month alone, I have received 17 inquiries for 2021 weddings through my website’s intake form. The majority are scheduled to happen in Oregon in the next seven months. The average guest count of these weddings is between 80 and 120 guests (not including vendors) and it is unclear how many of those guests may be traveling into Oregon to attend the wedding and/or if there will be any kind of COVID safety protocol in place at the wedding.
So please, government officials in Oregon, make “wedding” its own activity on coronavirus.oregon.gov. This is the bare minimum. Otherwise, people will continue to improvise and if we’ve learned anything in the past 10 months, improvising during a pandemic can have devastating results.