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Making Plans, Defiantly, amid the Chaos and Madness

Associated Press

   In the "new normal" that is America during the coronavirus pandemic,
   the act of making plans has taken on a complicated new meaning. People
   are craving structure amid the uncertainty and chaos, and for some,
   that means holding on to plans, both short-term and long-term, they had
   before the virus struck. Or it means making new plans - for a summer
   wedding or a fall vacation. But how can one make plans when nobody
   knows how long the current situation will last?

   As owners of a wedding and event-planning business, Karina Lopez and
   Curtis Rogers have always known how the best-laid plans can go awry.
   But there's no way they could have imagined just a few weeks ago what
   would happen to their very own wedding plans.

   First, the joyous bash they'd been meticulously planning for many
   months -- a three-day celebration for 200 guests -- was thrown into
   indefinite limbo. Then they both tested positive for coronavirus.

   Yet now, as they recover in quarantine and try to keep their distance
   from each other in a one-bedroom New York City apartment, Lopez and
   Rogers are still making wedding plans -- methodically and, indeed,
   defiantly. After all, they're planners. It's what keeps them going.

   "I definitely had one or two meltdowns," says Lopez, 32, who is still
   experiencing symptoms but feels she's on the mend. "Which I look back
   and realize is so silly, considering what people are going through."
   But now, she says, wedding planning has become therapy: "It went from
   making me insane, to keeping me sane."

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