[This article originally appeared on QinetiQ North America’s Technology Blog in September 2012.]

In danger of being upstaged at her own wedding ceremony, Laura Wong had a Dragon Runner robot secretly serve as her ring bearer at her wedding this past spring – to the delight of family, friends and geeky romantics everywhere. “Not everybody has a robot at their wedding,” Laura said. Just Princess Leia and these guys.

For the past four years, Laura has been working on the Dragon Runner as a mechanical engineer at QinetiQ North America, designing payloads for the twenty-pound unmanned ground vehicle. “I’ve always had a love for robotics,” Laura confessed. After a failed attempt to train her dog to carry the rings, Laura asked her boss if it would be okay to have a Dragon Runner perform the duty at her wedding.

The whole thing was a secret. Only close family and friends knew the robot would be there. “When it came down the aisle, everyone was laughing and having a blast,” she said. “It went over really well.”

Following the wedding, Laura’s father William Wong posted a write-up of the ceremony, and not surprisingly, the story went viral. Sites like Gizmodo, Buzz Patrol, Geekologie and The Mary Sue picked it up, and Laura and her husband were inundated with attention.

“People were posting on my Facebook page, ‘Did you see this? Look at this one!'” she recounts with a laugh, “It went international. It was a lot more than we expected!”

Check out the video below to meet Laura and listen to her account of the event.

Try not to be too jealous…