You can connect with people a lot of ways via Skype. But one couple took Skyping to to a whole new level last weekend when they exchanged wedding vows via the popular VOIP service.
The groom, Samuel Kim, was in the isolation ward of a local hospital at the time, putting in jeopardy the big wedding he and his bride-to-be Helen Oh, had planned. The couple had friends and family coming in from across the world for the ceremony when Kim took ill and was forced to go to the hospital.
Kim tells Reuters he was initially reluctant to tell his bride of his condition because he was afraid of causing her grief.
When he finally did tell Oh later in the week, the couple improvised a solution by holding the wedding via the Web video conferencing system.
“Guests said it was inspirational, they really admired my fiance for being able to stand at the altar in the manner that she did, alone and not crying the whole time,” Kim said from his bed at UCI Medical Center in Orange.
“She was able to hold her ground and I was able to hold my ground, not crying or anything,” he said.
Oh said the Skype wedding was not the perfect way to have a ceremony, but that guests were happy.
“He said he will make up for it, he promised me he’s going to be the best husband in the world,” Oh said. “He felt really terrible that he wasn’t there.”
The afternoon wedding utilized five live cameramen at the couple’s high-tech Korean church capturing the ceremony for guests watching on jumbo screens, and for Kim himself watching on a laptop in the hospital’s isolation ward.
Kim’s hospital is not very far from the church, and he said he did not feel distant from the ceremony and the 500 guests there.
The professional-style presentation included split-screen images and an audio crew that gave Kim his cue, before his face was to appear on screen.
Kim’s hospital room was decorated with flowers that nurses bought with their own money, he said.
Oh said that she does not credit Web technology alone for making the wedding a success.
“I couldn’t have done it without God,” she said.
Up next for the couple: the honeymoon. Kim surprised Oh with plane tickets to Europe, where they will visit Paris and Prague, after he recovers from his lung infection.
Kim said that he expects to leave the hospital this week.
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