Couple Married Via Nintendo

[Mulboyne]

New Jersey News: A marriage made in cyber-heaven

As a young girl, Tammy Li envisioned marrying the man of her dreams in a big white wedding surrounded by her friends and family. Of course, her dreams never included a wedding cake shaped like a Nintendo DS. Or table decorations modeled after video game graphics. Or her 250 guests leaving the reception with free copies of her favorite video game as wedding favors. But that's what Li received Saturday when she married Bernie Peng -- the man known across the internet as the "love struck hacker"-- in a video-game-themed wedding at the Madison Hotel in Morristown. "When you're little and you dream about your wedding, this is definitely nothing that I expected it would be," said Li, 27. "It's better than I expected." The ceremony brought a happy ending to a geeky love story that has spread around the globe. It began late last year when Peng, a computer programmer, decided to ask Li to marry him by reprogramming "Bejeweled," her favorite video game, for the Nintendo DS gaming system. Peng, 26, spent a month rewriting the game's code so it would pop the question and a picture of a pink sapphire ring would descend when an unsuspecting Li reached a certain score. "I thought it was pretty cool, in a nerdy way," he said at the time. It worked. A delighted Li accepted Peng's cyber-proposal and the real-life pink sapphire ring that went with it. Then, Peng posted the story and photos of his video game hacking feat on his blog (xanga.com/p3ng). The story became an internet phenomenon, spreading from website to website until Peng's blog eventually got more than 100,000 views and 600 comments...more...