Love & Marriage: No longer a sacred act between, well, people

Lately, our society has been spending more time on their computers. We work online, we shop online, we chat online, we play games online, some have significant others that they date online. It was inevitable that we might move to the next stage: Marriage online. There are sites like Virtual Wedding that offer such services for couples, let you have a ceremony, invite all your friends, and you pop out legally bound on the other end.



But moving further away from that sort of ceremony, a new type of ceremony has come forth. The Avatar Wedding. In the age of Mass Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) people are so entranced by their characters and their lives in game that they look for love there too. Admittedly, the games tend to be rather addictive. One of my friend's mother plays several regularly...and by several I mean World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Champions Online, City of Heroes and more. And by regularly, I mean every day for a large portion of the day. If there is a MMORPGers anonymous, please let me know and I'll enroll her.

Anyway, back on topic. To avoid making too broad of a generalization, I know that not all of these are serious, but some of these avatar romances are. If you are looking to get married in-game on WoW, make sure you have everything.

When one looks at World of Warcraft marriages, you kind of have to shrug and say, "To each their own." If two people want to get married to each other that way, I'm not going to stop 'em. But what if it isn't marriage that has some connection between two people?

Take, for example, Sal 9000 a 27-year-old living in Tokyo. He married a beautiful woman named Nene Anegasaki. But when compared to most blushing brides, she has one major thing that makes her stand out. She's a video game character in a game called "Love Plus" for the Nintendo DS. And yes, there was a wedding ceremony.

You sleep with it every night, it's great to cuddle into, and you can rely on it being there whenever you return to bed. Now if only it could cook.

I am a pillow lover. I sleep with 9 pillows and I could sleep with more. And I'm not talking small dinky pillows, I'm talking about big honkin' pillows that cover every spot of bed that I myself do not cover and more. (I do sleep on a twin so there isn't as much area to cover) But when given the option of a real person to cuddle into, I don't need any pillows to get a good night's rest.

But in Korea, someone needs his pillow when he's sleeping. Not only that, he needs it when he's awake. He needs it at the movies. He needs it at the amusement park. And he doesn't need it for physical comfort. That pillow is his date...and wife. Lee Jin-gyu married his hugging pillow featuring a life-sized picture of an anime character: Fate Testarossa.

While she clearly accepted the Wedding Kiss, I'm still unsure how they got bound when she wasn't participating in the vows...

Just in case those aren't enough for you, feel free to check out these other strange unions:

Man Marries Mannequin

Woman Marries the Berlin Wall

I told you they were odd.