MANILA, Philippines – On Saturday, May 30, 2020, at 10:50 pm, I climbed out of bed, sat at a desk, and, in the glow of my laptop, watched one of my oldest friends get married.

Technically, the ceremony took place in the United States, where my friend and her now-husband live. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, everything happened entirely online. The couple, officiant, witnesses, and immediate family were all on one Zoom call, which was broadcast live on a secret Facebook group for all their guests to watch from all over the world. 

Their Zoom wedding looked something like this: in the top left corner of the screen, the couple, who looked especially beautiful even on a webcam; in the frame below them, the groom’s mother, visibly teary-eyed throughout; in the middle panels, the poker-faced witnesses; in the top right corner, the officiant, and below her, packed tightly into one frame, all 5 of the bride’s family, peering over each others’ heads, calling from Manila.

The rest of us were invisible. We watched them as if from the other side of a two-way mirror. In an effort to feel a little less like a bystander, I dropped a comment just before the ceremony began.

“Rica, you’re so beautiful,” I wrote, at precisely 1 minute and 14 seconds, according to the live chat.

The ceremony was quick. The groom’s mom read an ee cummings poem. The officiant walked the couple through their vows. They took each others’ hands and shared the most chaste of kisses. Meanwhile our friend group – logged on together on a separate video call – were on varying levels of weepy. 

As the ceremony wrapped up, I left a few more comments on the live stream, another feeble attempt to be present, somehow.

“We are all crying,” I wrote, as the comments were flooded with variations of “Congratulations,” and “We love you,” – the best any of us can do to let the couple know we were there somehow, celebrating with them.  

After the ceremony, I shut the laptop and went back to bed – thinking of what the other guests who attended the wedding ended up doing after. Like me, they probably just went about their days as normal. 

Premier party venue: the internet

This is how celebrations happen now. We stare at our gadgets as we sit in dark rooms, most likely in our ratty pambahay. 

This was the year that e-numans became a thing. Friends logged on to the same video call, drinks in hand, and conversations at the ready – almost like old times, except no one dressed up and if you got drunk your friend no longer has to save you from a bad decision. 

This was the year lovers marked anniversaries with Netflix movie dates and video calls, the year when birthday gifts were ordered online and sent in bubble-wrap and cardboard (which arguably could be more fun to unwrap than a be-ribboned present). Even religious celebrations were streamed online. Many Catholics have not had communion in ages.

Last year’s Metro Manila Pride March was attended by a record-breaking crowd so thick that there were rainbows every which way you looked. For the same event this year, people tagged the organizers with photos of them holding up their banners, which were then flashed on a Facebook live stream and shared on Twitter. 

The thing is, most of us go online every day to work, and do groceries, pay bills and accomplish other mundane things. So really, online weddings and birthday e-numans don’t feel so special. They can even be rather unsettling. 

Hardly anything is fleeting now because everything is recorded online, and we can screenshot and download as well. But hardly anything is tangible either. I have no scents or sensations to remember from that wedding. My most vivid memory is being bathed in the glow of my laptop, and trying to hold back tears before realizing no one was around to see me cry anyway. When our bodies can’t hold memories, our computers do it for us.

With every digital celebration, there’s an attempt to make things feel the same – but we all know it could never be the same. So why do we even bother to celebrate anything at all? 

An act of defiance

Indeed, pandemic celebrations are certainly not grand – unless, say, you’re at a Voltes V-themed mañanita that violates all sorts of quarantine protocols. They may even be perfunctory. But when there is so little to celebrate, when there are more things to be anxious than joyful about, celebrating however we can is almost like an act of defiance.

Celebrations, perhaps, now more than ever, are necessary.

Not to be dramatic, but at the rate the pandemic is going, there’s a dark ocean of uncertainty ahead of us – and any sort of celebration is like a little buoy of hope, just enough to float us on through from one day to the next.

On the comments section of my friend’s wedding, amid all the “congratulations,” my friend Jenny wrote “cheers.” It’s a word that is thrown around often at any sort of celebration. But that night I felt like it took on a new meaning, an invitation – a challenge even – to keep finding ways to feel joy and to share joy in a world so devoid of it, even if we can’t really hold on to it, even if our bodies won’t really record the memory, even if this is the only way we can do it now. 

The whole world is looking forward to a someday when the threat of the coronavirus is vanquished, when we can hug each other, and dance with each other, and eat the same food and breathe the same air again without fear. When that day comes, it will be a relief, and a true cause for celebration.

I think though that when that day comes, I will think of  my friend’s online wedding, perhaps even revisit it from time to time on the secret Facebook group where it will always exist, if only to remember how a swift, solemn ceremony that I watched on my computer helped me – and perhaps everyone else who was there – get by. – Rappler.com