Pune couple becomes India’s first to hold blockchain wedding with digital priest and NFT

Weddings all over the world are going through a sea change due to the Covid pandemic and advances in digital technology.

The changes are now happening in India as well.

Just a few weeks back, a couple from Tamil Nadu embraced the advancements in virtual reality and used it as a medium to hold their wedding.

Dinesh SP and Janaganandhini Ramaswamy announced they will tie the knot in metaverse with a reception that would presided over by an avatar of the bride’s late father.

Around the same time, a couple from Kolkata hosted more than 400 guests on Google Meet for their virtual wedding reception.

Now, a couple from Pune have taken thing things to the next level by getting married via blockchain technology from the OpenSea platform.

In what is being dubbed as ‘India’s first blockchain wedding’, Shruti Nair and Anil Narasipuram took their vows while seated before their computers and in the presence of a ‘digital priest’ Anoop Pakki.

“On Nov 15, 2021, Shruti Nair and I got married! Given the era of Covid that we live in, we decided to keep it small with a courthouse wedding, also known as a ‘Registered Marriage’ in India. We also decided to immortalize our union using blockchain technology,” Anil wrote on LinkedIn.

“In an online ceremony, officiated by our very own ‘digital priest’ Anoop Pakki, Shruti and I made our marriage ‘blockchain official’ with an Ethereum smart contract that consecrated our commitment to each other in the form of an NFT minted on OpenSea,” the post added.

Anil informed that the image used to create the NFT was a photo of his wife’s engagement ring with the wedding vows embedded in the image itself.

The couple had their court marriage in November. And they started the digital ceremony as soon as they got back from the Registrar’s Office in Pune.

Explaining the process, Narasipuram wrote that he and his wife set up Metamask wallets and their digital priest minted the NFT on OpenSea before transferring it to him.

They were not all alone as their close friend and family members watched the 15-minute-long ceremony on Google Meet.

The wedding vows were read after the couple received the blessings of the digital priest. Once the transaction was confirmed by Anil, he transferred the NFT to his wife’s digital wallet. 

“The transaction took a few minutes (and about $35 in ETH gas fees) after which we were pronounced husband and wife by our digital priest. The transaction is a permanent, immutable, and public record of our commitment to each other on the ETH blockchain,” the post concluded.