Married to Technology

One of my best friends is getting married so I've been watching a lot of 'Four Weddings' on TLC. Clearly her impending wedding is the only reason I'm watching this show, and I have never, ever, ever watched four-hours of this show before in one sitting. Clearly.

I know I normally critique TV shows on this site, but today I'm going to go above and beyond and actually critique a wedding. Well, critique may be too strong a word. At worst this is constructive criticism, at best slightly befuddled admiration...


In this particular episode of 'Four Weddings'* the bride and her groom were both obsessed with technology. Which is fine of course, considering the fact that I'm currently typing this blog post on my iPhone and obviously that is a totally sane thing to do. But what was a little bizarre was the extent to which they integrated their love of technology into their wedding.

The big feature of the cocktail hour was a large touchscreen television. The screen allowed their guests to "interact" (via their phones of course), and post comments and photos to Foursquare, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. For instance, moments before the ceremony started the groom wrote, "getting married. brb".

I get it, okay? You love your cell phone, you love your social media, and you (presumably) love your spouse-to-be...so why not mix it all up? Well, truth be told, the main reason is that a cocktail hour where every single person is staring at the phone in their hand isn't the most entertaining thing in the world. I mean, I could have stayed home, looked at my phone from the comfort of my couch, and I would have basically been at the wedding. And god forbid you forgot your phone in the car. Plus, it kind of ruins the fun of going home and checking out what wedding photos etc. people have posted on Facebook because, well, you already did all of that.

I completely accept that people should do whatever they want at their wedding, because it's their wedding. That being said, I was just confused by this decision. I don't know, maybe I'm not progressive enough. What do you think? Should social media be such a large part of a person's wedding day?

photo from weddingbee.com

*It may have been 'Four Weddings: Canada'. Who knows. Aren't we basically the same country? (Don't answer that)