Getting married during a pandemic!

[covidsux]

I'm having tough time on making a decision about my wedding. I'm hoping someone could help me move in the right direction(I understand that 'right direction' not a thing anymore).
I was supposed to get married in Feburary.

I feel like I'm not getting my traditional Indian wedding anymore. Now I'm thinking I should go to India for a few weeks and register my marriage and get the hell back. Apply for my spouse's PR and wait for the pandemic to be over to have a reception for the family and friends.
I just care about the marriage certificate at this point and to get my Fiance's PR application started. I don't want anybody else other than our families to join to avoid the risk of COVID-19.
Q1. Will this look bad on the application?

Don't want to do the religious ritual as that's just unneceassary risk. We won't be able to travel anywhere either after it as I don't want to risk it.
Q2. Will not doing religious rituals (lava/phere) make our wedding look fraudulent?

Q3a. Should I go ahead with this plan?
Q3b. Or wait till feburary to see what my options are? That could go either way, thing might get better or get way worse. The latter is more likely.

Our engagement ceremony in Feb 2019 was pretty regular with over 200 people in it. I have pictures and videos for proof from that as well.
We went out a few times in Feb after the engagement. We have pictures of us togther. There are call logs, whatsapp messages and whatsapp video call logs.

Thanks in advance!

 

[steaky]

At this time, can you even get a return ticket to India? From what I seen from other threads, there are still evacuation flight from India to Toronto.

 

[covidsux]

At this time, can you even get a return ticket to India? From what I seen from other threads, there are still evacuation flight from India to Toronto.

I looked up on different websites. I was able to find fairly priced tickets on sale.

 

[siddharthbala]

Same boat as you, mate - was supposed to have gotten married on June 25 but due to the current pandemic, we had to put off plans indefinitely because India's situation is still developing and nothing is particularly clear. My fiancee and I are currently debating whether to plan for a quick registered marriage in December 2020 with a plan to hold a party for the family later when things settle down, but my only concern is the paperwork - Can we expect the CIC to be reasonable about the fact that 2020 was an absolutely disastrous years for most people's wedding plans and that life doesn't necessarily stop for 'tradition', least of all the CIC's expectation of what an Indian wedding should be like? My fiancee happens to work at the Visa Processing agency, as luck would have it - they've been told that nothing more than Biometrics are being processed at this point in time - no visas.

At this rate, if we had to wait for everything to line up for a traditional wedding to be possible, the earliest is going to be 2021, which, coupled with the current processing time means the soonest my partner can be with me is 2022! Obviously, neither of us can wait because it's unacceptable, so we're thinking of taking our chances and planning for a registered marriage with her friends, my friends, our parents and those that can make it, with plans to do a formal ceremony later but use the terrible year that is 2020 as an explanation when giving additional proof of our relationship and preparing the package.

Hopefully, this situation could help the CIC revise their process to account for these situations in the future because it blindsided everyone.