
I felt pretty good this weekend until Monday rolled around and I saw the headlines everywhere: Robot Conducts Wedding Ceremony. After just getting married myself (that’s right ladies, the Gnards are off the table), I have to say I was not aware that a robot minister was an option. Or any robots in general. How many robots were at my wedding, you ask? Zero. Zero robots. I did the robot on the dance floor, but there were no actual robots (that I’m aware of).
As the countless news articles have told us: Tokyo, Japan, the “I-Fairy” married Satoko Inoue and Tomohiro Shibata. While on the other side of the world, Mr. Wolfie G. Nards and Ms. Dee Dee Supreme were married by a relatively normal hu-man. Winner: Japan. The same Japan that brought us this and these. There’s not one aspect of nerdity that Japan does not dominate.
But what’s this, ignore the man behind the curtain! Also stated in the articles, but largely ignored was this little tidbit, “Wires led out from beneath it to a black curtain a few feet away, where a man crouched and clicked commands into a computer.” In our race for ministerbots, we overlooked that it’s not an actual robot. That’s not a robot, that’s what we call a puppet. If you say a robot performed the wedding I expect the robot to perform the wedding itself and file any relevant paper work itself. The only thing worse than being married by a human is being married by a human by proxy.
The I-Fairy sells for about 6.3 million yen ($68,000), which is a few million yen more than I have handy. For five figures, I expect a fully mechanized RO-BOT. Not a man flipping switches. If I wanted a fancy puppet, I’d get a puppet. Jeff Dunham probably costs what, three hundred… tops.
And while I didn’t have any over priced puppets, I did have this…

That’s a Futurama Planet Express delivery spaceship in cake form.


Complete with little Fry and little Leela.
Suck it Japan. And it was delicious.
Oh, and congrats on the marriage thing.
(Robot Voice of God: “You may kiss the bride.” Groom: “Can I maybe, like, just smell her breath a little bit?”)