Marta (32 years old) and Gabi (36 years old) get married on September 9 at 13.00 in the afternoon. If any of the guests had forgotten, there would be no problem: you can check it on their wedding website. Because Marta and Gabi, like many other couples who get married, have created a specific website about their link: in it they tell their commitment, they show the specific data of the ceremony, the coordinates of the subsequent celebrations, the place where they take place (with information on how to get there included), the wedding list, a space to confirm attendance, the option to specify possible food allergies and one more area to send them congratulatory messages.
The reason why Marta and Gabi decided to make a website for their wedding could not be more practical: "We have a large part of our families outside of Spain," reasons Marta. Meanwhile, Gabi lists the list of countries where her relatives live and the difficulty that this meant when inviting them: "Ireland, Sweden, Morocco ... Imagine if we had to go and bring the invitation to all of them. It was impossible." "A friend," Marta continues, "showed us a digital invitation he had received for a wedding and we saw that this was the solution. So we send them the invitation with the link to the web. And the truth is that it makes everything very easy."
There are no concrete data on how many couples come to this technological resource for the celebration of their union, but every day there are more, according to Marcos Vázquez, spokesman for the company Bodayweb, which makes online portals for links. "In Spain this is more recent, but in the United States or Latin America, just as couples are considering where they are going to get married or who is going to take their photos, they also consider who is going to make the wedding website," he says. Vázquez's company is dedicated to making all kinds of pages for companies, and they decided to also dedicate themselves specifically to this field: "A few years ago we decided to open a new service dedicated to wedding websites. We have not made an extra effort to grow it and yet, the number has been increasing and now we do about a hundred wedding websites a year. "
Kate Darling, robot expert: "We shouldn't laugh at people who fall in love with a machine. It will happen to all of us."
Natalia Ortiz, who is a wedding planner, is increasingly accustomed to technological requests from her guests: "What we do most are streamings because we are mainly dedicated to international weddings, couples from other countries who come to get married in Spain. And it often happens that not all guests can move. But we also have many cases of weddings in which some guests can not go for any reason or couples who prefer to have a very family nucleus, very small, or even be the two alone in the ceremony and for their family and friends to participate in some way broadcast their wedding in streaming, "explains Ortiz.
Drones for the field
A "small wedding" with the guests following it from the computers or television screens of their homes is much cheaper: "The price of streaming depends on the company we hire to make the realization, but it is usually between 300 and 400 euros". That is what it costs, according to Ortiz, the use of drones to take photos or videos zenithal of the union, another of the most demanded technological options, although there are disappointments: "Many couples ask us, but it is not always possible. If the wedding is an open space, they can be used, but if it is an urban center, in an area surrounded by buildings, drones cannot be flown there."
As for the prices of the websites, there is a great diversity, but nothing outside a normal budget: "When the web is made personally for that couple, the price is between 200 and 300 euros, but it can also be done on a wedding platform (the websites that offer the hiring through them of any service that may be needed to celebrate the union) and in this case the price can be 10 or 15 euros," says Ortiz.
Another of the technological resources that are beginning to be frequent in weddings are those of augmented reality, according to Ortiz: "A couple asked us for a themed wedding about a movie that they loved and in addition to the decoration we also included augmented reality with images from the film."
An aspect that is increasingly contemplated when planning a wedding is the reflection that the event will have on social networks. In some more exclusive links even a person is hired to exercise during that day of community manager, in charge of uploading to platforms all the information and images of the wedding, but even many couples who do not go so far. "They ask us to make them a hashtag for that day," explains Ortiz, "and so everyone, bride and groom and guests, can use it for what they publish on the networks about the wedding."
If there is an object that symbolizes a marriage union, it is the wedding ring. Those alliances that couples exchange at the time of marriage since the fifteenth century are the image of a union and there is also technology with intelligent rings. The wedding planner says that no couple has yet asked for them in Spain, but the trend is coming: smart rings can, among other things, control the mobile and other electronic devices and monitor physical exercise and vital signs. The BBC told a few days ago the case of a Czech couple who has chosen for their marriage these jewels / devices with the peculiarity that each of them can hear, thanks to the ring, the heartbeat of the other. An example of technological romanticism.
You can follow EL PAÍS Tecnología on Facebook and Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber
