Bride, groom click with wedding vows on the Web

PANAMA CITY BEACH - Northwest Florida is a popular place to schedule a destination wedding, says Steve Nichols, but the bride and groom's friends and family are not always able to make the trip.

Nichols' new Panama City Beach Company, Live Vows, offers a way for loved ones to view weddings they cannot attend with the help of wedding Webcasts, a service that streams high-quality video and audio from live wedding ceremonies to Internet viewers via a broadband connection.

"It's a way for brides and grooms to connect with families abroad," Nichols said Thursday, as he discussed the new business.

The director of new media at Beach TV and Tourist Network, Nichols said he and his business partner, Tim Kinderman, started discussing wedding Webcasts and the idea of forming Live Vows in 2006.

Kinderman serves as the general manager of Criolla's restaurant, Nichols said, and the two read a newspaper article about wedding Webcasts that spawned the idea.

Part of Live Vows' $899 full-service wedding Webcast includes a wedding Webcast page on the company's site, www.livevows.com. A staff member is on site to Webcast the wedding ceremony, which can be up to two hours in length.

Brides and grooms can link from their Webcast pages to friends and family, and Nichols said anyone with a broadband connection can watch the wedding.

The company also offers a premier wedding Webcast for $1,349 that includes professionally designed e-mail invitations, a greeting session with online guests after the wedding ceremony, and an extension of the couple's Webcast archive from one to six months.

Live Vows' service area includes most of Northwest Florida, but Nichols said it will take its mobile Webcast to other parts of the state.

The company performed its first wedding Webcast in July for a couple married in Altamonte Springs.

Nichols said most of the Colombian bride's family, which was scattered throughout South and Central America, could not attend the wedding in person but were able to see it via the Web. Several of the groom's family members in the United States also were able to view the ceremony, with Webcast guests able to interact with the couple in a "meet-and-greet" session after the ceremony.

"It was a way to include them without spending a bunch of money," Nichols said.

Nichols said about 50 people were physically at the wedding, which featured a 20-minute ceremony followed by a 30 minute meet-and-greet session.

According to Webcast statistics provided by Nichols, the Altamonte Springs' couple's Webcast page had 98 visitors, the bulk coming from the United States and Colombia and others from Chile, Costa Rica, China, Brazil and the United Kingdom.