Month: December 2021

The Wedding (Part 2)

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A Justice of Peace (JOP) has magical powers…they can write with yellow in the chat box. All volunteers can, as a matter of fact. This is very useful at a wedding where you want to yell at the guests to shut up because important things, such as the vows, will get lost in the flood of chat. That didn’t work this time. There were 135 people at our wedding. Each and every one of them was sitting behind their computer in Europe, in Canada, in the U.S., and in Australia…mostly because we had guests from Brazil and India as well. Right there, you can capture the beauty of a virtual world. No matter where you are, you can be there. You can be at a place with others you are fond of. Is it virtual? Are you an avatar? Doesn’t matter. What mattered (just a little bit) was that 135 people were constantly chatting…and they didn’t want to stop. I imagined that I’d get angry and frustrated, but to my biggest surprise, I actually enjoyed it. It made everything alive.

We had a fairly short ceremony…no roses or candles or ribbons around our wrists. Our vows on air would have overpowered everything anyway. According to what they wrote in chat, many people were crying or in awe. I don’t think it was because of us. It was the unique nature of the vows. They weren’t copy-pasted from an online website and weren’t filled with cliches. They were our honest and loving words…and our story. That 135 guests were all friends…close friends, not so close friends, new and old ones. S. invited people who hadn’t logged in for years, but they got the notification of the email, and they came in. It was beautiful and heartwarming.

After everyone congratulated…the boring part came next: The hug-line. Yes, among other things, you can hug each other in Utherverse. It took about half an hour. Then, oh joy, the photos. Because we needed photos of the wedding party. I told the photographer not to do it, but she insisted, and since S. didn’t mind, I was just pouting in front of my screen. That, again, took a long time…boys only, girls only, now everyone altogether, now just S. and I. Meantime, our guests were having fun at the reception site. I’m telling you, it was like at a real-life wedding.

At the end of the day, when it was just S. and I sitting and talking, I realized how many things I missed. I had to focus on my vows and what the JOP was saying. As a result, I missed out on most of the chat. What was worse is that I didn’t even remember who attended! Not everyone. Weeks later, when I looked through the photos, I kept asking S. “Who is that?” “Was XY there?” It sounds funny, but it bothered me.

The wedding video came out 3 weeks later. Based on the increasing number of views, people still click on it even after 9 months. I got a few messages from friends that said ours was the most beautiful wedding they have ever seen in Utherverse. Yes, that makes me feel good. We worked hard on everything from matching colors to unique music. I felt strange after the wedding. You know when you suddenly have to calm down after a big event, and everything seems to be slow. But it was just the virtual surface. Our relationship has gotten stronger by the day…

The Wedding (Part 1)

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So I mentioned that yes, you can get married in Utherverse. I personally wanted a medium one. Just S. and I walking down the aisle as our best friends witness us at a beautiful little pixel place. To my biggest surprise, S. objected. No nooo…we need a huge wedding, and we need all of our friends…and a reception…and a DJ. Oh, and bridesmaids and groomsmen. I rolled my eyes, but of course, I didn’t say no. Where I’m from, there are bridesmaids and/or flower girls at weddings. No groomsmen, no best man and maid of honor, and you walk down the aisle usually together with the groom. In Utherverse, it’s common that you even ask a friend/dad/mom/uncle/niece to give you away. I haven’t really written about families yet. I will. That deserves an entire post.

Anyhow, I wasn’t really excited about all this because I knew we would have a lot on our plates just like with a real-life wedding. The beauty of virtual worlds is that you can truly mimic real life. To some, this is pathetic; to others, it’s a tool or opportunity. We sat down with S. and made a list. First of all, we need a place. There are decorators in Utherverse who build wedding venues and either rent or sell them. We looked through the directory and visited the venues we found. Most of them looked like they were decorated by 5-year-olds. Neither of us desired to get married under cherry blossom trees surrounded by rose bushes that look like blurry drawings. Even in a virtual world, a realistic environment is way better. Then we found a forest. Wisteria trees, wooden benches, nice reception area with glowing candles. We fell in love with it. Little did we know, it was basically a replica of the venue in Twilight…ugh. We bought it anyway.

The next step was choosing the outfits for both of us and the bridesmaids/groomsmen. That was a lot of fun. For some reason, I LOVE dressing up. I hate it in real life. Trying on everything and strolling around the store is tiring and often boring. It’s different in a virtual world. You have a perfect body and trying on a full outfit takes one click. I picked blue and white colors…S. picked pink and white. Pink is his signature color. Real men wear pink. Okay, actually, it started with a joke years ago, but that’s a long story.

Then we talked with a Justice of Peace who is a long-time friend of ours. We discussed the ceremony…nothing fancy. Many couples choose a ceremony, such as handfasting, rose ceremony, or unity candle ceremony. To be honest, although I have a strong imagination, I find these ceremonies kind of silly for one reason. You don’t have animations/actions to hold a candle or wrap a ribbon around your wrists. Therefore, they simply describe it…it’s weird. We knew we wanted to write our own vows and have the DJ play it on air. That’s always moving, and at least the guests don’t have to read the entire text in chat if they are lazy.

At last, the invitation. As a graphic designer, making the invitation and the wedding certificate was my task. I wouldn’t have given it to someone else. Creating it was very, very joyful. The problem came after that. Who do we invite? Our friends, obviously. S. has 10.000 of them. Half of those are not active members, and many others are not close friends, but S. wanted to invite everyone. What if we miss someone even if we don’t think they would come? Their feelings will get hurt. Sending out the invitations is time-consuming, but I had a different issue. When there is a lot of people online in the same area, some computers can’t take it. I attended weddings and parties where half of the guests crashed every 2 minutes. Why does this happen? There is a technical explanation, but I’m not going to go there here.

We fought. We fought about the little changes we wanted to make at the venue. We fought about the invitations. At one point, we even had an argument about the groomsmen’s tuxes. The wedding was the only thing we ever fought about, nothing else…not before and not since. Funny. I’m wondering if all those couples that break up right before the wedding run into these issues as well, and the major differences between opinions contribute to the break-ups. I hope not…

Slowly and eventually, everything calmed down. We had all tasks done. On the day before the wedding, we had a full rehearsal. Believe it or not, that is extremely important in a virtual world where the DJ,  JoP, the couple, and the wedding party all have to be in sync…without seeing each other. That night, my maid of honor asked me if I was nervous. I wasn’t. My stomach only shrank to the size of a peanut the next day when my pretty little avatar went into the tent where I hid…because my soon-to-be husband must not see my pixel wedding dress…of course.