I had seen girlfriends get glassy-eyed, pouring through copies of bridal magazines
and I had been forced to sit through wedding footage of friend's weddings. I swore
I would never do it to anyone when it was me....but....now that I am married I want
to show everyone the wedding pictures.
The bride and groom were miles apart, but in CompuServe's WorldsAway community they're now closer than they've ever been.
WorldsAway, the virtual online world available exclusively through CompuServe, began celebrating a month of romance throughout February Wednesday with a real-life virtual wedding on Valentine's Day afternoon. For the first time in WorldsAway, a real-life bride and groom--Victoria Vaughn and groom Joseph Perling--exchanged marriage vows in the WorldsAway virtual chapel via their onscreen personas, known as "avatars."
In the lawful ceremony, the groom repeated his vows from a romantic beach front location in Venice Beach, California, while the bride tied the knot from her backyard treehouse miles away in Hollywood.
The groom's father, The Reverend R. John Perling, performed the ceremony from his church in Beverly Hills. Family members and invited friends located throughout the U.S. attended the private ceremony as virtual guests--wedding invitations included WorldsAway CD-ROMs with instructions on how to access CompuServe. The best man participated from the East Coast and the matron of honor from the Pacific Northwest.
"Marriage is a promise about the future," said bride Vaughn. "Cyberspace expands the future of possibilities and we want to be a part of these exciting new possibilities." Marriages have often taken place in unusual circumstances, particularly during wartime, noted Rev. Perling, pastor of Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church. "This is an actual wedding--a lifelong union of two people, blessed by God. Joseph's and Victoria's vows are sacred and heartfelt even though they will take place in a virtual church."
"This wedding is a perfect example of why WorldsAway has become the most popular virtual world online," said Tony Christopher, WorldsAway executive director. "We've created a community for people across town--and around the world--to join together to build significant and lasting relationships. We've experienced phenomenal growth--400 percent in just 90 days. It's clear our combination of technology and community building has struck a chord with online users looking for something beyond a graphical space."