Smart ring and robot-written vows: what high-tech wedding ceremonies look like – 05/20/2023 – Market

Instead of the traditional gold rings, the couple Jiri and Ondrej Vedral, from the Czech Republic, decided to exchange smart rings on their wedding day.

Smart alliances are electronic devices that work similarly to smartwatches (smart watches). Typically, they allow the user to monitor their heart rate and make contactless payments.

This is a rapidly growing sector of technology. Within a year, its global sales increased by 21%.

But the Czech couple’s smart wedding bands are designed more romantically than most. They allow you to see and feel your partner’s heartbeat.

Each alliance is connected via Bluetooth to an application on the user’s smartphone. And, through the application, the two alliances can be connected to each other.

With this, whenever Jiri presses his wedding ring, it physically pulses with Ondrej’s heartbeat and displays it as a moving red line. The same goes for Ondrej’s ring.

As long as their cell phones are connected to the internet, each receives their partner’s heartbeat in real time. And if one of them gets disconnected, they get the most recent recorded heartbeat.

“We were never into gold and diamonds,” says Jiri. “We wanted something different and we liked this new idea. We felt like pioneers.”

The rechargeable ring is called the HB Ring. It is manufactured by the Czech company The Touch.

Sales of the first version of the alliance, in 2016, were only limited. But the manufacturer is now seeing increased interest globally, thanks to the general development of the smart ring sector.

This year, the company also launched a new parallel product – the Touch medallion. It must be worn on a necklace and has the same technology as rings.

Its target audience includes committed couples who might like the idea of ​​being able to feel their partner’s heartbeat, but don’t want to give up traditional wedding bands.

Jiri and Ondrej are one of many couples who are increasingly using technology in their wedding ceremonies.

From drones to photograph the ceremony to digital tools to help with planning tasks such as budgeting and seating arrangements, technology has seeped into many important aspects of the wedding day.

The technological trend in wedding ceremonies has been growing since people started organizing much of their lives on their smartphones, says Zoe Burke, editor-in-chief of UK wedding planning website hitched.co.uk.

“I think people just aren’t astonished anymore that they can plan their wedding on their cell phone. Chances are, you met your partner on your cell phone,” she says.

A third of British couples say they use WhatsApp to invite people to their wedding, while 60% of them announce their engagement on social media.

Some people are even using artificial intelligence (AI) software to write their wedding vows or speeches. American wedding planning website Joy recently launched an AI tool for this purpose.

Called the Creative Block Wedding Writers Assistant, the tool is based on ChatGPT, the chatbot created by San Francisco technology company OpenAI.

Vishal Joshi is one of the founders and CEO of Joy. He claims that the aim of the AI ​​tool is not to eliminate the romantic part of writing vows or speeches, but to make life easier for people who have difficulty expressing their feelings in words.

“We did a survey and found that 89% of respondents find it daunting to start writing their wedding texts,” he says. “The AI ​​tool is not intended to replace human emotions, but it is useful for many people.”

The covid-19 pandemic has helped strengthen tech marriages. Couples who didn’t want to postpone their nuptials began getting married over Zoom or streaming the ceremony live to guests at home.

But virtual weddings are now suffering the consequences of their association with pandemic restrictions, according to Burke.

“People have abandoned live-streamed weddings,” she says. “They don’t want to remember that time.”

For couples facing rising costs caused by rising inflation, using technology can bring savings, such as sending electronic invitations instead of paper ones. And there is also an environmental benefit.

In London, wedding planner Rohita Pabla says, “It’s about cost savings and eco-consciousness. More and more couples are thinking about the environment.”

‘gif booths’

It’s also not surprising that many people want to make an impact on social media during their big day. Many couples and guests go out of their way to post videos on TikTok or Instagram during their wedding and at the reception after the ceremony.

This trend has increased the demand for “gif booths” for the reception. These are rented photo booths, which use small sets of photos to create gifs or moving images. The user simply enters their mobile number and the gif is immediately sent to their phone.

“Some [casais] they want to use and share the photos on many different platforms,” ​​says Pabla. “They want to be the Instagram couple.”

But couples also need to cater to less tech-savvy guests, or those who prefer to receive their invitations the traditional way.

Pabla specializes in planning weddings for South Asian people. She says that she works with many couples who are concerned with observing certain traditions, alongside technological solutions.

In traditional Indian weddings, for example, it is customary for the bride and groom to personally deliver a physical wedding invitation to family members and older guests.

“That’s why the couple makes a few copies of the invitations for their parents and grandparents”, says Pabla. “But for your friends the same age, they just send a digital invite.”

Joshi points out that marriage technology can be used to “make everything easier and a lot more interesting”.

But he recommends, at the same time, being careful not to “lose the charm and romance around real-world weddings, which is essentially about getting friends and family together.”