Introduction

Over the past couple of years, a growing number of studies have investigated the social responses and environmental, social, psychological and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (Jasanoff et al, 2021; Harambam, 2020). As with other contributions to this volume, these studies suggest that the current planetary crisis will generate profound transformations in paid and unpaid labour, mobility, energy use, democratic government, law enforcement, and trust on media and expertise. Some commentators even argue that COVID-19 involves an important reshaping of contemporary globalization, characterized by ‘intensifying dynamics of instability, disintegration, insecurity, dislocation, relativism, inequality, and degradation’ (Steger and James, 2020: 188). While large-scale and long-term implications of COVID-19 have been explored, the literature has paid less attention to the early days of the pandemic outbreak, when these important and profound transformations were mostly out of sight and had only started to manifest.

Intending to make a modest contribution to fill this gap in the literature, this chapter focuses on the days that followed from 11 March 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. The research method and the data presented here are rather unusual. The account I provide draws from my own experience as the host of an international wedding scheduled for the 21 March 2020 in my hometown, Pachuca, Mexico. Although unexpectedly and unintendedly, organizing an international wedding turned out to be an exceptional way of documenting early responses to the nascent pandemic of a very diverse group of people. Since my partner and I are a German-Mexican couple that lived and studied in the UK for about six years before moving to Germany, our guest list included around 40 people travelling from nearly a dozen countries. Since we were in constant communication with people exposed to different news, local concerns, regulations, health policies and travel restrictions, we were able to get a sense of the rapidly transforming attitudes from individuals and governments in different corners of the planet towards the spread of the virus.

The account I provide here, however, cannot be taken as that of a neutral and innocent observer. The ways in which my partner and I communicated with our guests contributed to some extent to how they perceived and exposed themselves to the risks.