London bridesmaid wows wedding guests in Canada when she arrives as a hologram

Watch the moment bridesmaid Sarah Redington in London appears as a hologram at her close friend Brittany Smith Gallant's wedding in Canada

A bridesmaid from London was a surprise guest at a wedding in Canada - without leaving the UK.

Sarah Redington was due to be a bridesmaid at her close friend Brittany Smith Gallant's wedding to Jeffrey in August but Covid restrictions meant she was unable to attend.

Bride-to-be Ms Smith Gallant said she was "pretty devastated" at the news and had a number of tearful conversations with Ms Redington and Mr Gallant.

But groom Mr Gallant surprised his new wife during the ceremony at a vineyard in Niagara-on-the-Lake when he introduced Ms Redington into the room despite her being thousands of miles away.

"I think everyone here knows how important London is to Brittany, and it's also home to many of her closest friends, some who, because of Covid restrictions, unfortunately couldn't physically be here with us tonight," he said on the night.

"Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to one of Brittany's bridesmaids from London, Sarah Redington."

"It was really special, really special," Ms Smith Gallant said.

In order to pull the stunt off, Sarah Redington had to don her dress, go through hair and make-up, grab a glass of champagne and get to a studio in London at 3am.

To the audience it appears as if Sarah was 'live' in the room.

To hide his secret, he pretended to Brittany he was taking singing lessons.

"I knew this surprise was coming, he was reminding me that he was taking his singing lessons and he was going to sing to me. And I remember just saying like 'oh, God,'" she said.

Mr Gallant had found a company that specialises in a "particular type of technology."

Instead, Mr Redington had enlisted the help of Larry O'Reilly, Chief Executive Officer at ARHT Media Inc, a company that specialises in augmented reality holographic technology.

Mr O'Reilly explains how she got there: "We capture her on a 4K camera from a video perspective. We also capture her audio and we take that information and we put it into our server where we encrypt it and we compress it and we send it over the common internet. And then it's played back onto a screen, which is a holographic screen where the video file hits that screen and is reflected back to the audience."

"Your brain is telling you they're in the room with you and that's when you create presence and it changes the emotional engagement and communication in a very meaningful way," he adds.