NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian sympathises with changes to wedding plans

The current four-square metre social distancing rule means that 54 people will be in the Christian Assembly of Sydney church with 16 others watching the ceremony on a screen in a nearby hall. Family in China who were unable to travel to Australia will watch via Zoom.

Plans for an afternoon tea after the church service had to be cancelled because it would have encouraged mingling.

The disruption to weddings was something NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian sympathised with on Friday as she urged people to increase COVID-19 testing rates to give the government enough confidence to relax restrictions.

Ms Berejiklian said it was “really sad” when people had to make changes to their wedding guest numbers.

“That really breaks my heart because people have planned those events up to a number of years,” she told radio station 2GB. “As soon as we are able to give people that relief we will.”

The Premier acknowledged that restricted numbers for major events such as weddings had been difficult to navigate.

“We all know how stressful it is for people who are having those milestone events,” she said at her daily media briefing. “Our testing rates are not where we would like them to be.

She said the government was amenable to considering health advice in relation to easing restrictions within days.

However she said the government wouldn’t have the confidence to do that unless there were higher rates of testing so as to be assured that all previously undetected cases of the virus in the community had been captured.

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Wendy Wong and Will Lam will be married in Mosman on Saturday and had originally planned to invite 130 guests when they began their planning after their engagement in 2019.

“We had to cut 40 guests,” Ms Wong said. “That was hard. That was almost a third of the guest list gone.”

The original wedding date in May 2020 was cancelled. It was rescheduled to this month when wedding guest numbers temporarily fell to 50 last year.

Many guests also cancelled in the week leading up to the wedding because of the COVID-19 restrictions in Sydney and because some older guests were worried about the possible health risk.

“We have 98 guests, which is under the 100 limit,” she said. “It was a struggle to get there with the 100 because we had a lot of guests pull out during COVID.

“A lot of guests got cold feet so cancelled at the last minute, which meant we had to find other people to fill in their spots.”

Despite the last-minute changes, Ms Zeng said she now feels lucky the wedding is going ahead.

“I’m really excited,” she said. “It’s something really positive to start the year. It is also something I know may not have gone ahead. So I’m really lucky it is going ahead. And the weather is good.

“So at the end of the day, we’ve come through.”