No one was sick. No one was going to or coming from China. Yet the coronavirus managed to destroy a couple's dream wedding.

Daniela Kenmure and Jocelyn Kirchner had a wonderful plan. According to The Asbury Park Press, the Toms River couple was set to board a cruise next month where they’d be married on the ship surrounded by 75 guests. They paid Norwegian Cruise Lines $13,000 to have all the wedding vendors supplied by Norwegian and $5,000 more for three tickets, the third for their 11-year-old daughter.

Then coronavirus happened and brought about a new policy. Anyone boarding the ship would have to present a passport showing they had not visited China in the prior 30 days.

Now the wedding was to take place while the ship was still docked in New York and 50 of the 75 guests would only be on the ship for the wedding then get off and not take the actual cruise. Didn’t matter. Just to set foot on their ship meant you had to have this passport. Because these people were not actually traveling many of them didn’t have passports.

As the Asbury Park Press article reports, the couple felt it was too great a burden to ask these dozens of guests to suddenly scramble and try to arrange passports so late in the game. They asked for an exception. They were denied. They made the painful decision to cancel the wedding portion of their cruise and now Norwegian told them they couldn’t be refunded all their money. Scrambling to find a new place to get married before the cruise they could only get back $9,000 of their $13,000 even though it was Norwegian that changed the rules on them.

Come on Norwegian Cruise Lines! This wasn’t a couple that got cold feet. This wasn’t a couple that was being a problem or wasn’t paying their bills. Neither you nor they knew there would be a coronavirus outbreak but it was you after all that changed the policy. Since this was your protocol shift I think you have far deeper pockets than these ladies from Toms River to absorb a. $4,000 loss. Scrambling to find last minute wedding vendors is tough enough. Leaving them $4,000 less to play with renders it harder still. Make yourselves look like you care and do the right thing.

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