New Yorkers can get married over FaceTime during coronavirus outbreak

Thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, now would not seem like a propitious time to get married. First of all, in some states, you cannot obtain the necessary license because non-essential government offices have been shuttered. And thanks to social distancing, it isn't realistic to plan a reception. The only part of the wedding experience that might be improved by a quarantine is the honeymoon.

But where there is technology, there is a way. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (whose own brother, CNN's Chris Cuomo, has been stricken by COVID-19) disseminated a tweet yesterday (via The Verge) in which he announced the issuance of an Executive Order allowing New Yorkers to obtain a marriage license remotely. Clerks can now perform the ceremony via video chat. So in other words, you can get married in the state of New York via FaceTime and Duo. And since Zoom allows 100 and more people to participate in a chat at the same time (FaceTime allows up to 32 people to chat simultaneously while the number for Duo is 12), you can have a virtual reception afterward.

During his daily coronavirus press briefing yesterday, the governor said, "There is now no excuse when the question comes up for marriage. You can do it by Zoom. Yes or no." We do want to point out that Governor Cuomo isn't saying that the ceremony must be streamed over Zoom. As we just mentioned above, Apple's FaceTime and Google's Duo are both more than capable of handling such a task.