A bride was left in total shock when her bridesmaid who couldn't be at her wedding appeared as a hologram.
Brittany Smith Gallant, who lives in Canada, was devastated when - due to covid restrictions - one of her closest friends, Sarah Redington, couldn't be at the big day.
With Sarah living in London, it was impossible for her to attend - but Brittany's now-husband Jeffrey Gallant had a genius idea, and set about working with a special company to create a hologram of Sarah.
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You can watch the amazing moment below:
In the clip, Jeffrey explained: "I think everyone here knows how important London is to Britney, and it's also home to many of her closest friends, some who, because of covid restrictions, unfortunately couldn't physically be here with us tonight.
"... Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to one of Britney's bridesmaids from London, Sarah Redington," says Jeff, to Brittany's complete shock.
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"Oh my god, this is absolutely incredible," said Brittany.
She later added: "When that surprise happened of the hologram, it was, as I've said, it was the cherry on top for sure, but it was just so special because I actually, like, physically saw her there, although it was just particles. But it was really special, really special."
In order to pull the stunt off, Sarah had to don her dress, go through hair and make-up, grab a glass of champagne and get to a studio in London at 3am, to correlate with the time of the wedding reception.
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Larry O'Reilly, Chief Executive Officer at ARHT Media Inc, explained how the incredible technology works.
"We capture her on a 4K camera from a video perspective. We also capture her audio and we take that information and we put it into our server where we encrypt it and we compress it and we send it over the common internet," he said.
"And then it's played back onto a screen, which is a holographic screen where the video file hits that screen and is reflected back to the audience."
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He added: "Your brain is telling you they're in the room with you and that's when you create presence and it changes the emotional engagement and communication in a very meaningful way."
Brittany later explained: "Justin Trudeau (Canadian Prime Minister) announced that we were you know, we wouldn't be able to have anyone that wasn't a Canadian citizen or American citizen at the wedding. So I was pretty devastated. Like I had definitely had a number of tears with Sarah, with Jeff."
This is incredible! Husband of the year award goes to Jeff for organising such an amazing idea.
Featured Image Credit: AP NewsTopics: Life, Wedding, Technology, Real Life