Hours after the District’s reimposed mask mandate went into effect Saturday, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) officiated an outdoor wedding with an indoor reception, raising questions over whether she had violated her own order.

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       But in response to a report in the Washington Examiner that accused her of violating the mask mandate, Bowser’s office denied that she was breaking the rule. The event was mostly outside, where the mandate does not require people to be masked, and the mayor was unmasked inside while dining, Bowser’s office said in a statement.

       The Examiner cited a picture of an unmasked Bowser seated at a table with glasses on it. It was not clear whether Bowser had just eaten or drunk something when the picture was taken.

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       “The mask mandate is for indoor settings (excluding while eating and drinking) and does not apply to outdoor settings,” the office said, while confirming that Bowser did officiate the wedding Saturday. “The Mayor wore a mask indoors in compliance with the mandate.”

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       It was not immediately clear how many people were at the event, but one expert cautions that extended exposure in large gatherings like the wedding Bowser officiated can raise one’s risk of being infected.

       Though the mask order seems sweeping, there are exceptions, including being unmasked while “actively eating or drinking,” according to D.C. Health, as Bowser’s office said she did at the wedding.

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       While public health experts agreed with the exceptions, they said elected leaders should be held to a higher standard. One of the most important mitigation strategies is consistent messaging, said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

       Bowser announced the new requirement Thursday after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked localities with more than 50 new cases per 100,000 residents per week to re-implement indoor masking. The District’s seven-day average of new reported cases is up 33 percent in the past week, according to The Washington Post’s tracker.

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       Throughout much of the pandemic, a citywide mask mandate was imposed alongside capacity restrictions. In mid-May, Bowser lifted the mask requirement for vaccinated people while removing capacity and activity restrictions for most businesses.

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       But as cases ticked up with the rise of the more contagious delta variant, the mayor elected to reimpose only the indoor masking mandate, allowing businesses to continue operating at full capacity. Public health experts agreed with that step as a symbol to show the public that it needs to be concerned about the state of the virus.

       “The goal of the mask mandate is not to make sure that everyone is wearing a mask every single minute indoors, because we all know that won’t be possible,” Dowdy said. “It’s a signal to people saying, ‘This is a real threat.’ [The mask] is providing protection, but the biggest protection is the message.”

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       Just by seeing signs on the front of stores or others in masks, Dowdy said, people may understand that they should be more cautious than they have been over the past couple of months.

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       Even though cases are rising, they are not near the pandemic highs of the winter months, when hundreds of thousands of people nationwide were testing positive each day. And with many of the people most susceptible to severe symptoms having been vaccinated, experts expect hospitalizations and deaths to rise slower than cases.

       Because of that, Dowdy said he agrees with the decision to not limit capacity just yet. Mask mandates don’t directly hurt revenue in the same way that capacity limits might, he said, so there is a different calculus as to when to implement them.

       The epidemiologist compared the mask mandate to a speed limit. Even if people are not wearing masks while they eat, an increase in mask-wearing will provide the community with more protection.

       “If there are a certain few times you’re taking a mask off, it’s probably not all that dangerous,” Dowdy said. “But it’s very important that, as a society, we’re not all going 90 miles an hour down the interstate. It’s about trying to reduce the overall amount of exposure.”