wedding

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.

So real…

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There were rumors…Some “friends” backed off as a result. Other friends showed more support than ever. Isn’t that interesting? I mean, really, we are in a virtual world. You can’t touch me, you can’t harm me…but remember, words are powerful; thus, having support or having your reputation destroyed does have an effect. I can’t count how many people left and never came back because they were bullied. We didn’t really care. Of course, we appreciated our friends, but it wouldn’t have mattered if we had none. Our love was flourishing, and nothing could stop that. We still spent every waking minute together. It had become clear, though, that it was not enough. We had to meet in real life.

In mid-October, S. jumped on a plane and flew down to meet me. He stayed with me for a weekend that proved that our bond reached beyond every little pixel dream. It was real…so real. That’s when I wrote a “thank you” email to the CEO of Utherverse. He never replied, but ah well. He’s a busy guy. I thought it would be terrible to get back to our daily lives without being together in person, but it was not. The memories fueled us, but more importantly, we knew that it’s only a matter of time before we can meet again. We decided that we will stay in each other’s lives as much as we can. We didn’t talk about me divorcing my husband. We simply believed that everything would happen the way it has to, and we will be led by our pure and deep love.

Covid wasn’t very supportive. The Canadian-US border shut down completely. Every month, we hoped for positive change, but we accepted that we might have to wait for a long time. We didn’t get bitter or sad. We celebrated Christmas in a brand new and adorable Christmas house where we made falling snow and put a ridiculously ugly Santa on the roof. I was able to balance my real and virtual life. Nothing had changed in my marriage since I had gone back to Utherverse, but we had a nice Christmas. By this time, a desire was itching in my heart. I wanted S. to marry me. Yes, marry me. Yes, in the virtual world. Yes, I wanted to wear a virtual wedding gown at a virtual wedding venue and say “I do” in front of a Justice of Peace who would then provide us with a marriage certificate with the Utherverse stamp on the bottom.

Weddings in Utherverse are very common. Even if you can’t or don’t want to marry in reality, you can express your love and commitment in Utherverse by marrying your lover. Obviously, your marriage certificate is only valid in Utherverse. Why would you want one? I’m not sure…it creates a beautiful illusion, perhaps. Some people take their virtual marriage very seriously. I know couples who got married in Utherverse years ago, and now they are married in real life. I know couples who came to Utherverse as a married couple, and they loved the idea so much…they got married in Utherverse as well. I also know a lot of couples who broke up right before or right after their wedding. I think in many cases, the biggest reason to get married is all about feeling loved and celebrated. My motivation was a mix of both. I knew I couldn’t just marry S. in reality, so I thought officiating our bond in Utherverse was a nice idea. And yes, I also wanted to be celebrated. I was and still am very proud of Us.

On New Year’s Eve, we were at a jazz club just passing the time. All of a sudden, the DJ told me to get up on stage. I knew what was going on…or let’s say, I hoped. There is a thing called the Broadcast. Authorized people can send a broadcast message that appears in purple on the top of the screen. It raises attention…the purple text doesn’t get lost in local chat either. As I was standing on the stage, a purple text appeared…sentence by sentence S. proposed to me. It was a long and beautiful proposal, and everyone was ecstatic…especially me. I was so very happy. I laughed and cried at the same time. It was just a text on the screen of my laptop. I couldn’t see S. going down on one knee or anything like that, but it was just as real. I said yes, and that night I stayed up giggling while staring at my pixel diamond ring.