On Friday, a federal judge ruled against Franklin County wedding venue Belle Garden Estate and its owner Charles Russell, who sued Gov. Ralph Northam in an attempt to expand the number of people who could attend a wedding under the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.
Under current executive orders, businesses can host only 25 people outdoors if it’s a private booking, or 10 people indoors. Northam announced this week that the restrictions on weddings would be loosened April 1 to allow 100 people outdoors and 50 indoors, but Belle Garden Estate and Russell still pursued the suit, which sought to allow wedding venues to operate at 30% capacity, up to 1,000 people outdoors or 250 indoors, as allowed at baseball stadiums and other entertainment venues. With the April 1 policy changes, those caps will rise to up to 5,000 attendance in outdoor venues and 1,000 indoors.
Northam has said that weddings are riskier than other kinds of gatherings because of family members and friends hugging and dancing. On Tuesday, the governor said he will revisit lifting other restrictions on a monthly basis, as long as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline. He re-emphasized that outdoor wedding venues will continue to be limited to 100 attendees for the time being.
