RYAN George from Cardiff asked his fiancée Alice if he could invite four of his best friends to their wedding. The only catch was he’d never actually met them.
George and friends Gerard, Scott, Kesean and Matt had known each other for years, first meeting while trying to get a team together for FIFA Pro Clubs.
FIFA 23 is out now.
Pro Clubs is a mode in FIFA games where each player takes control of an individual footballer on the field.
They can talk via microphone and form a strategy to take out the competition.
What started out as purely an in-game friendship, soon became more than that, as the group began messaging and calling outside of FIFA.
Despite all five of them living in the UK, they had only ever spoken online, failing to meet in real life over the years.
That was until George’s wedding, where he invited his four best friends that he’d never actually met.
Despite this George told the BBC that it was a “no-brainer to invite the boys”.
Before the wedding, the group claims they met up online several times a week to play FIFA, ranking 44th in the world in Pro Clubs.
George explains: “We’ve grown up with the game so I suppose at heart we still think that we are 17, and playing the same game as we were back then.
“Me and the boys aren’t really the type to be gaming all the time, we’ve all got lives outside of Xbox and friends and families so we weren’t really looking for friends.
“But it was definitely organic and moving to group chats then became a tool for everyone to speak about other things and get a bit closer.”
Gerard was unable to attend the wedding, as his wife had recently given birth where they live in Belfast.
However, Kesean from London, and Scott and Matt from Cambridgeshire were more than up for the trip.
The recently married couple, who also have two kids, said that playing games online was a great way to meet friends when you are short on time.
George says: “If you are struggling, or you feel a little bit lonely you can log on and meet some new people and it’s a great platform for that.
“There’s loads of different games and the market’s massive.”
George’s FIFA friends were apparently a hit with the guests at the wedding, and the five friends have made plans to go see Blink 182 in Belfast and finally meet Gerard.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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