Robot wedding

I will always remember my wedding day as one of the true highlights of my life. Ordinarily I am not overly driven by tradition but I kind of like that I know how a typical wedding is going to unfold. You’ve got the flowers, the fancy clothes, the music – the priest. Whoa , now hold up there, who needs a priest anymore when you can have a robot preside over your big day.

Yes a real honest to goodness robot performed the nuptials at a ceremony in Japan. Makes sense since the Japanese own over 400,000 of the world’s 800,000 or so industrial robots. What’s wrong with Japan’s robo-domination of automation extending to the long established wedding industry too? I have linked the video here of the happy couple and their ‘short’ but sweet mechanical minister. Be forewarned it is a touching ceremony so have a sheet of foil handy to blow your Roomba’s nose if it happens to be watching between vacuuming.

Actually this wedding went just fine and seemed oddly traditional with Sarah Brightman’s ‘Ave Maria’ providing the background music. I liked the ceremony despite the unusual child-voiced, blinking robo-vicar literally sitting at the helm. I was a little distracted by the bot’s ‘I-Fairy’ brand name though. I don’t mean to be insensitive but is this the BEST name for ANY priest right now, even if it is a robot? I think that particular name would be much more appropriate for a pillow-packing, tooth-extracting Tinker-BOT!

So a brave new world is apparently on the horizon. If weddings are falling to the wiles of heavy machinery then you know funerals will soon follow. And let’s not forget the babies. As the gears turn, it is a natural progression that with all those robo marriages, there is bound to be a bounty of baby ‘begatting’ going on too. I’m sure these new robots can handle the midwife process technically, but we’ll have to do something about those cold, metal-feeling hands. Not the robots mind you - they use space age plastics and silicone fingers. I’m referring to human doctors and their infamous icy touch!