According to an interesting story by the Associated Press (AP), the nuptials at a recent marriage in Tokyo were led by a 4-foot-tall seated robot “I-Fairy”, manufactured by Kokoro Co., in association with the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science.

This was the first time ever that a marriage was solemnized by a robot.

The venue for the Sunday wedding ceremony was the rooftop of a restaurant in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo. Wearing a wreath of flower, the I-Fairy – bolted to her chair - directed the nuptials, with wires leading out from beneath her to a black curtain a few feet away, from where a man clicked commands into a computer.

It was the groom, the 42-year-old Tomohiro Shibata, a robotics professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in central Japan, who insisted that his marriage to his beautiful bride, the 36-year-old Kokoro employee Satoko Inoue, be led by I-Fairy – the robot with flashing eyes, and plastic pigtails; deft at Michael Jackson moves and having the voice of Glenda Jackson.

Explaining her atypical marriage ceremony, Inoue told the AP: “I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends. Those in the robot industry mostly understand this, but people mainly want robots near them that serve some purpose.”