Ryan and Candice Hurley had a “terrestrial” wedding 14 years ago. On Feb. 4 they got married again, but this time it was their digital identities tying the knot in the metaverse.
The Hurleys live in Phoenix, but their virtual avatars decamped to Decentraland, a computerized world, or metaverse, for their virtual wedding. Naturally, the pair owes their connection to another form of technology: they met on Match.com.
“It was a little overwhelming. I think we're kind of coming down a little bit now,” Ryan said after the ceremony. “It was exciting and unique and had a couple of technical difficulties but was still beautiful and fun.”
No wedding goes perfectly as planned and the Hurley’s ceremony was rife with technical difficulties (more on that below).
Metaverse Marriage - Ryan and Candice Hurley - Feb. 4, 2022
The nuptials were officiated by Clint Bolick, Associate Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, who acknowledged he was outside his area of expertise.
“I am not very tech savvy, so I'm not sure I fully understand what happened,” he said. “When humans become a part of the metaverse two things follow them, romance and love. And I think that it's very exciting, they're not only romantic pioneers, but legal pioneers.”
In concert with the event, which was the first wedding to happen in Decentraland, the pair recorded their metaverse marriage license and prenuptial agreements as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to be stored on the ethereum blockchain in perpetuity.
The virtual wedding’s design and documentation were organized by Scottsdale’s Rose Law Group, which now has practices focused on Web3 and NFT Law.
“It appears that we are the first full-service business law firm on a blockchain metaverse to provide legal services to the metaverse,” Rose Law Group founder and president Jordan Rose said.
The firm is working on all kinds of virtual legal issues, including due diligence for digital real estate transactions, forming holding entities for digital assets, advising businesses operating in the metaverse and more.
There have been other weddings conducted in the metaverse, but according to Rose, this was the first time a couple has been married in a blockchain-based metaverse, the first time a prenuptial agreement has been crafted in the metaverse and the first time a metaverse marriage license was recorded on a blockchain as an NFT. All of these things, the firm says, effectuate the marriage of the virtual identities.
No wedding would be complete without party favors and guests at the Hurley’s virtual affair had the opportunity to claim an NFT inspired by the couple’s dog Pepper. Rose Law Group helped mint 1,000 NFTs for guests.
Inside the wedding
In order to attend the wedding, guests had to create their own virtual avatar (including this reporter). Dress code for a virtual wedding is not as stringent as the weddings on planet Earth; Virtual guests at the Hurley’s ceremony wore shorts, angel wings, suits of robotic armor and rode skateboards.
After a tutorial on how to move the avatar and operate the camera, guests were directed to “84, 34,” coordinates inside Decentraland where Rose Law Group had built up its wedding venue.
Given the groundbreaking nature of the event, the wedding hall was crowded. Scores of avatars rushed around, danced, floated in the air and emoted while waiting for the ceremony to begin.
Rose Law Group said there were 600 RSVPs for the event, much more than the 80 or so that typically sign up for an event on Decentraland. The firm said that more than 3,200 people tuned in for the ceremony, but the high volume of traffic became a problem as users were split up into different servers and the event was fragmented.
Meta-masterpieces
Anarchy reigned in the wedding hall, with avatars crowding the aisle, people playing music over their microphones and the chat box constantly pinging as messages rolled in.
“All the NFTs are claimed. If you’re here for an NFT go home,” one user wrote about 20 minutes into the event.
Ryan’s avatar was on hand for his wedding, but his bride Candice did not make a virtual appearance, despite Wagner’s "Bride Chorus" beckoning her to appear.
Rose Law Group created the venue with the mountains of Telluride, Colorado in mind, but outside the venue other people had created their own meta-masterpieces. In the area around the wedding there was a spaceship, clusters of trees, a towering venue seemingly meant to host an even bigger party and a tall “Trump Statue” directly behind the Rose property.
The crowd eventually disbanded after it was clear that the virtual ceremony would not be occurring as planned, with some users fleeing to an afterparty in another part of Decentraland and some standing idle as if abandoned by their masters. Others simply logged off to go enjoy the weekend, in the real world.
