Internet
Indian couple get married in virtual castle
The computer animation shows the virtual marriage of Janaganandhini Ramaswamy and Dinesh Kshatriya. Photo: Vignesh/TardiVerse/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
What can you do if you want to celebrate your wedding bigger than the corona conditions allow? One option is to go online.
An Indian couple celebrated their wedding in a virtual castle. The idea for this Metaverse wedding came to Janaganandhini Ramaswamy and Dinesh Kshatriya when the authorities in their state of Tamil Nadu recently announced new corona protection measures.
According to this, a maximum of 100 guests could have attended, but the two wanted a much larger wedding – as is customary in India, as reported by Indian media.
The couple commissioned an Indian blockchain startup to build a virtual castle – vaguely inspired by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts magic school, as the two are fans of the stories by JK Rowling, said Vignesh Selvaraj of the company. Around 6,000 guests could have logged into the castle as avatars via the Internet, moved there like in a computer game, interacted with one another and watched music and other performances on a screen.
Certified bride and groom avatars
During part of the celebration, the bride and groom were still engaged in a small offline celebration while animated versions of them interacted with the guests in the virtual castle. Later they would have taken over their control.
They ended up selling the newlyweds’ avatars as NFTs, Selvaraj said. A Non-Fungible Token or NFT is a digital certificate of authenticity secured with the blockchain data chain using encryption technology and is unique. The popularity of NFTs has not only increased significantly in India.
The avatar copies were quickly sold on a virtual marketplace, reports local television station NDTV. At least one was initially sold for around 8.80 euros (around 750 rupees) and shortly afterwards resold for tenfold. NFT critics see a hype in the technology that can quickly collapse.