Inn owners: Precautions were taken at cluster wedding

By
Brian Dowd
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7
West Tisbury selectmen called the owners of Lambert's Cove Inn to a meeting Wednesday to talk about this wedding that was featured by Vogue.

Nearly a month and a half after public health officials reported the Island’s first cluster of COVID-19 cases linked to a wedding at Lambert’s Cove Inn in West Tisbury, inn owners Keya and John Cain told selectmen they took every appropriate precaution to prevent spread of the virus.

The 40-person wedding was held for a couple from off-Island, and was later featured in a Vogue online story.

Keya Cain told selectmen she did not feel it was clear that transmission happened during the wedding, but public health officials confirmed multiple times that the wedding was the cause of the cluster that was later linked to at least 10 COVID-19 cases.

“All the guests were given masks. Going forward, we’re going to work much more closely with the wedding planners, to make sure the travel orders are followed,” Cain said.

The Cains said the “vast majority” of wedding guests were staying together at a house in Edgartown. They also said wedding guests were required to wear masks except when eating and posing for photos.

But selectman Skipper Manter said photos from the wedding told a different story. “Some of the pictures show something a little contrary to what you’re describing,” Manter said. “There’s people sitting and enjoying themselves all over the place without masks on, and it’s not just for the photo ops.”

Manter said he was concerned about other venues doing something similar, and wanted to be proactive to prevent clusters in the future.

“The photos are deceptive when you see a group of people. How do you know they’re not family living together? In fact, they were, a lot of them,” John Cain said. “That’s just a critical point; these were folks living together, and it’s really hard to see dimensions in a photo, and in fact you do see efforts of social distancing, you see empty rows, empty chairs. It’s clear there’s a theme there.”

Selectman Cynthia Mitchell told the Cains that in the future they should reach out to the town for help.

“As owners of the venue, you are, or your agents are, responsible to request and re-request, during an event like that, that people wear masks,” Mitchell said.

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7 COMMENTS

    • Carl, of course they cant and most likely they wont apologize!
      Deniability is the order of the day for them as well as the Inn.
      Plus, it is my understanding the business personal they purposely sought out were the types who were the most susceptible to possibly catching CV-19.

      I am very glad “the West Tisbury selectmen called the owners of Lambert’s Cove Inn to a meeting Wednesday to talk about this wedding that was featured by Vogue”.
      Good for you selectman Skipper Manter for calling them out about the non masking up as required and improper social distancing. I saw all the pictures you spoke of that were posted as well.
      They wanted big time publicity well they sure got it. It was just all negative and it deserved to be!

      GOD only know exactly just how wide spread they were / are actually responsible for. The island had been doing very good with low positive numbers.

      NOTE; “public health officials confirmed multiple times that the wedding was the cause of the cluster that was later linked to at least 10 COVID-19 cases’.

  3. This story has been kicking around for a while. I would like to directly address the bride and the groom here. The benchmark here for our spike seems to be your wedding. While it is likely that this event could have kicked off a rise in cases, I want to offer my “condolences” –for lack of a better word, that your special day has been tainted by the pandemic and this story.
    I sincerely hope that you live a long and happy life together.
    You are the victims of a bizarre set of circumstances.

  4. It’s hard to blame the Inn, when the wedding guests were all staying in a house together in Edgartown- plus the wedding/house venue is responsible for 10 cases out of 444 on the island- hardly the reason the island is spiking now.

    • There were 40 people at the wedding and they were all staying together at a house in Edgartown? The Cains should come up with a better story than that.

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