This coin-operated wedding machine by British designers Concept Shed dispenses a pair of plastic wedding rings and a personalised receipt to newlyweds.
A recorded message encouraging passers-by to get married is automatically played out when motion sensors inside the AutoWed Wedding Machine are triggered.
Once a pound has been inserted, the traditional wedding march is played and couples can select what kind of union they require.
An accompanying receipt containing the names of the couple is then printed, which also includes a discount voucher for an auto-divorce.
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Here is some more information from Concept Studio:
The AutoWed Wedding Machine
As cruel and mechanised as it sounds, it has the emotions of a parking meter, yet somehow putting in your £1, getting a pair of plastic rings and a personalised wedding receipt still feels special when you share it with the one you love.
This is our first version of the machine which has been bought by marvin3m.com in the states. At eight feet tall and aesthetically part parking meter, part Cadillac and part cathedral with a little steam punk thrown in for good measure, it offers an imposing, yet irresistible presence.
Motion sensors are used to call out to passers-by to come and get hitched. Once you insert your money, it plays a specially composed intro version of the wedding march and asks you to select your union type; “Press one for straight, two for gay, three for lesbian or four for B.F.F.” You both enter your names on the bespoke machined metal keyboard and AutoWed asks if you take each other as lawful wedded partners and to press one for 'I do' or press two to 'Escape'. It then takes you through the rest of your ceremony and vends two plastic eggs with rings in and prints out your personalised wedding receipt from a thermal printer. It finishes by offering you a 10% discount for AutoDivorce with your receipt.
We built AutoWed using more than 300 bespoke parts from plywood and drainpipe to waterjet cut aluminium detailing, built a bespoke mechanical keyboard to give the look and feel we wanted and produced custom circuit boards for the electronics. We used an open source Arduino and wrote 1500 lines of C code to control the audio, vacuum florescent display, bespoke buttons, keyboard, egg vending mechanism and thermal printer. We are now designing a simplified AutoWed 2.0 to make it profitable for venues to operate one.
Keyboard
We wanted to make an amazing metal keyboard for the AutoWed machine that had the right retro steampunk look and feel, so we designed a metal faceplate with circular keys turned from aluminium with a recess for laser engraved white laminate legends. Each key has a flat on the end to prevent it rotating and a spring. The business end of the keys then push against regular computer keyboard keys. The USB/PS2 keyboard then interfaces with our Ardunio system using a PS2 library.