(http://readwrite.com/files/Github-bride-copy.png)
GitHub: Social coding platform. Revision control software. And now, wedding planner.
Less than a year after a woman posted an exacting boyfriend request (http://betabeat.com/2012/10/woman-posts-boyfriend-request-on-github-looking-for-someone-who-maintains-their-own-server/) to GitHub, the service—a site better known as a place where programmers collaborate on software code—has gotten decidedly more personal. Some of its denizens have taken to heart the timeworn advice that "Your wedding is the most important day of your life," creating programs for invitations (https://github.com/search?q=wedding+invitation&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults) and even apps for the big day. Others have gone even farther.
Take Amir Elaguizy (http://readwrite.com/lark.io), a GitHub member who designed a Pac-Man wedding invitation (https://github.com/aelaguiz/wedding_invitation), complete with animated bride-and-groom Pac-Men. The CEO of Review Lark (http://reviewlark.com) coded the invitation in JavaScript and made sure it was open to commits—the GitHub term for proposed alterations from other developers, if they find errors.
(http://readwrite.com/files/Invite-on-comp.jpg) "Please don't crash my wedding."
"I only put about 2 hours into this so it's not perfect but it's original and crafted with love," he wrote. Belatedly, he added: "Please don't crash my wedding."
When programmer Bubby Rayber got engaged, he set up a wedding itinerary (https://github.com/rayber/wedding) on GitHub to announce the good news to his friends and family. In lieu of comments, a feature GitHub doesn't offer, fellow programmers voiced their congratulations in commits. One friend even left an image in a file called "wedding/congratulate/congratulations.gif (https://github.com/rayber/wedding/blob/master/congratulate/congratulations.gif)."
Another programmer went the extra mile and created an iPhone app (https://github.com/pavankris/WeddingInvitation) exclusive to his wedding day. Since GitHub is designed to host open-source projects, in which the underlying code for software is available to all, anyone who knows how is welcome to download the code and edit the app for their own wedding.
One project, dubbed "wedding-invitation (https://github.com/TheHodge/wedding-invitation)," is programmer Dom Hodgson's especially geeky contribution to the sanctity of marriage. It's an invitation that includes plenty of programming in-jokes embedded within the code:
(http://readwrite.com/files/Github_Code_computer.png)
Hodgson is an event planner who's also conducting an ongoing wedding-plan/prank he call Don't Tweet The Bride (http://donttweetthebride.com/), in which he's planning the details of his wedding later this year without his fiancee's knowledge. He told ReadWrite he wanted to use GitHub for the invitation since it's open source software.
"When you announce you're getting married, everyone has advice," he said. "GitHub helps me take all the advice people are giving me about this and actually make it into the best it can be."
Hodgson first upped the ante by proposing to his fiancée with a moon bounce (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BgUd9No2BH0).
Now friends, family, and strangers alike are doling out advice for the invite in true GitHub fashion — by publishing commits. One person submitted the nerdiest Ruby joke (https://github.com/TheHodge/wedding-invitation/commit/fc04d762c9062594d7a505de2efc50e17770e3ef) I've ever seen:
+ def ceremony
+ begin
+ Ceremony.start
+ heather.kissed_by(dom)
+ Ceremony.sign_register(heather, dom)
+ heather.surname! = "Hodgson"
+ throw :bouquet
+ Ceremony.end
+ rescue AnyLawfulImpediment
+ # This should never happen!
+ end
+ end
"It's really hard to do wedding things that haven't been done to death," Hodgson added.
As GitHub increases in popularity as a wedding planning tool, open-source matrimonial projects might become more mainstream. For now though, they're the perfect—not to mention unique—touch to any nerd wedding.
ReadWrite