A few months ago, my childhood best friend who I had not seen for at least 25 years, invited me to his wedding in New Jersey. I immediately accepted and planned to fly up from Florida with my wife, toddler and infant, to participate in the celebration. The reception was to be held at our hotel, which was convenient so my wife could retire early with the kids. Unfortunately, however, a few weeks prior to the event when I casually disclosed in an email my plans to bring my kids, I was informed by the bride and groom that children were not welcome, and even though my wife was breastfeeding, an exception could not be made.
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This news was disappointing to say the least, and resulted in an entire cancellation of the trip. Frankly, while I have heard of kids being banned from weddings in the United States, I do not agree with it. My wife, who is a foreigner to the United States, and who spent the majority of her life growing up in Italy, had never even heard of such a thing and thought the concept of having a wedding without children was like having a wedding without music, or without food. This experience alone prompted me to write this blog post, exploring the Italian point of view on wedding child-bans.
In preparation for this post, I consulted with Italian wedding singer, Anna Lia Perna. Signorina Perna, who can be reached at neapol...@gmail.com, is based out of Naples, but travels all throughout Italy to perform at weddings. According to Perna, Italians almost never have weddings where children are expressly excluded. Sometimes, wedding guests may choose to leave their children at home as their personal preference, but it almost never happens where the bride and groom make a decision to ban their presence altogether. According to Perna, the presence of children at weddings is indispensable, promoting a most joyous and sacred matrimonial bond and celebration.
I also consulted with renowned Italian wedding planner, Michela Lunardi, who is based out of Milan. While Ms. Lunardi plans weddings for Italians and foreigners (including Americans), I inquired only about Italian weddings to explore an authentic Italian point of view. Similar to Perna, Signora Lunardi stated that the idea of having a wedding where children are not welcome is strange for Italians to understand. Italians are warm people, Lunardi explained, and they do not generally believe that the presence of children at weddings will cause problems for the wedding party and celebration. To the contrary, the presence of children at weddings is not only standard and customary for Italians, but they add a fun and happy component to all weddings.
The Rick Steves Heart of Italy tour was my first ever tour to Italy, and Europe in general. And it was a fantastic introduction to all Italy has to offer, the food, the people, the atmosphere was all so incredible. And the tour does an awesome job of making sure we get the full experience in enjoying them.
And our tour guide was incredible and made the trip so enjoyable. She was super sweet, easy to approach, and was eager to share everything about Italian culture. Throughout the trip and group dinners, she was more than happy to share about her backstory like her great experience with Rick Steves, and all the incredible things about her home country. And she was also thrilled to listen to all our stories from our lives back home, travel stories, or just casual pop culture from where we live like the price for clothes in the U.S. compared to Italy or about Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller (Since a guy at an olive oil refinery factory we visited looked just like him). She was excited to soak up all our thoughts and passions as we were on Italian culture and atmosphere. Her recommendations about everything from the shops to the best places to eat were top notch and held true to her word. When we were in Florence, she gave great recommendations for a sandwich restaurant for lunch and a amazing leather store to buy jackets and bags from.
Once in Volterra at a wine tasting, I was bored and began to sketch on a scratch piece of paper. After the tasting, she noticed my drawing and kindly gave me praise. Two days later, I got a gorgeous leather-bound sketchbook from her that she bought for me with a small amount of money Rick Steves tour guides have and can choose what to do with it. It was an authentic Italian sketchbook with paper from Florence that I could use as a memento that I could use to write and draw my Italian adventures in. Caught off guard by the thought and care she put into this gift for me, I was very touched by this act of kindness. This is a perfect example of the fantastic tour guides that Rick Steves appoint, and how they are kind, informative, and helpful while also making sure to make a personal connection with their group members, making sure they have a fun and memorable trip.
And to be honest, I was skeptical about the trip at first. I was nervous about the cramped schedule, the hot and loud crowds, and how I would be an outsider to a group of entirely new people. But luckily this was not the case and Rick Steves blew away my expectations along with my fears.
Secondly, I was concerned of interacting with the group and that it would be difficult to fit in. I feared I would be the youngest by 20+ years and could not find anything to talk to them about. But fortunately, this group was a fantastic one. It was mash up of people in different points of their lives and from all around the world which incited some fun conversations and moments. Each person was just this incredible collection of stories and jokes that made each meal or interaction was fun. All the people were fun and easy to approach to just share a small conversation for a moment or forge whole new friendships.
WOW, I'm so touched by your son's engagement & how helpful most of the tour guides were to him! IMAGINE how much he will retain & has learned from this experience. Excellent choice on behalf of the parents who set this up too!! I especially loved this comment & hope it gets passed on to RS tours -
Two days later, I got a gorgeous leather-bound sketchbook from her that she bought for me with a small amount of money Rick Steves tour guides have and can choose what to do with it. It was an authentic Italian sketchbook with paper from Florence that I could use as a memento that I could use to write and draw my Italian adventures in. Caught off guard by the thought and care she put into this gift for me, I was very touched by this act of kindness.
MorganMurphy, thanks! Our family loves food from different culture and always encourage our son to try various cuisine as well. I passed your comment to him and encourage him writing short reviews on Google map for any restaurants impress him.
Dave. Thanks. Before the trip we were worried that our son may feel bored. So we asked him to do a little research on the cities we will visit, check out the museums, restaurants, streets online, to find something he's interested in, so we can visit it together. Glad it worked out for all of us.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is currently rare in children and they seem to have a milder disease course and better prognosis than adults. However, SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has indirectly caused problems in pediatric medical assistance. In view of this we wanted to draw a picture of what happened during health emergency and analyze future prospects for restarting.
We involved the Italian pediatric scientific societies institutionally collected in the Italian Federation of Associations and Scientific Societies of the Pediatric Area (FIARPED); We sent a questionnaire to all scientific societies about the pediatric care activity during the COVID-19 emergency and future perspectives for the phase of post-containment.
The analysis of the questionnaires showed significant decrease of:admission, outpatient visits and specialist consultancy activities during the COVID-19 emergency, primarily linked to the fear of infection. Instead it was increased the serious degree of diseases admitted. Most of scientific societies maintained the relationship with chronic patients through some form of telemedicine, reporting a strong positive opinion about this modality. Finally showed the need to give life a new approach for hospitalizations and outpatient visits through a greater use of telemedicine, educational programs on families and a more decisive role of family pediatricians.
Our study highlighted many aspects that can be improved in pediatric care. We think that It will be necessary a new shared strategy to improve the management and continuity of care for pediatric patients, primarily developing a network of collaboration between families, family pediatrician and hospitals and by enhancing the use of new methods of telecommunications.
In this context, we wanted to draw a picture of what happened among Italian pediatric assistance services and to examine operational proposals to plan a joint action for the post-COVID phase. To this end, we collected, through a questionnaire, the views of 28 Italian medical and surgical pediatric scientific societies belonging to the FIARPED (Italian Federation of Associations and Scientific Societies of the Pediatric Area).
The study has involved all 28 of the Italian pediatric scientific societies (Tables 1 and 2), 23 from the medical field and 5 from the surgical field, institutionally collected in the FIARPED. Each society was asked to fill in a questionnaire (Additional file 1, see below) about the pediatric care activity during the COVID-19 emergency and future perspectives for the phase of post-containment.
The reduction percentages were based on the opinion of the Presidents and of scientific Committees of the societies, in order to offer a global point of view on changes in specific areas of pediatric care during lock down.
In the second part of the questionnaire we analyzed the application of telemedicine in the various specialties and its possible advantages and the use of other alternative assistance methods and possible future assistance options.
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