Weddings are not the things we do as a rule. However, this request was little different and is the best application of the internet and of community spirit we can think of.

The tiny village of Murton in Cumbria is where Elizabeth Allinson had grown up and the church is idyllic, standing alone in a field at the foot of the fells. With just 3 sockets, no phone and not a mobile signal for miles, it could not be further from the data streaming technology centres of Amsterdam from where her future husband Jan Platt hailed. Jan and Elizabeth’s happy occasion was a bitter sweet pill, Jan’s elderly motherly had become terminally ill, had rapidly deteriorated and was unable to to travel, equally Jan’s father was caring for her every second. We were asked to provide a live broadcast of the wedding from Murton to Amsterdam…with 1 weeks notice. All options were looked at and with no time or budget to wheel out Tricaster a solution was found : google earth helped us determine the farmhouse with broadband closest to the exchange and to the church, kindly community spirit allowed our very long network cable to be plugged in to their router before then passing through a pigsty and across a field to the church to take software switched feeds from HD webcams. All was mediated by a very efficient Skype link that not once challenged the miserly 0.5Mb bandwidth on hand. We had tested to oblivion, and optimised the link so that on the day could provide live view of the brides arrival, the ceremony and and the departure of the couple (while also filming for edit on our off the shelf broadcast kit). The inclusion of Jan’s parents in the ceremony was moving and happily tearful both sides of the North Sea with the Vicar able to constantly address both the couples parents and especially provide a happy occasion for Jannick. She had clearly ‘hung onto life’ for this very special occasion of her sons marriage. 48 hours later she passed away with Elizabeth and Jan at her bedside in the Netherlands.