Japanese Wedding!

How is a japanese wedding? I had the chance to experience it last week. But only partially... In Japan during the "wedding period" the bride and groom do various things together.

In Europe we have the "Wedding Day" because everything is done in about One Day: Ceremony, Signature, Lunch, Party and Pictures.

In Japan I call it "Wedding Period" because the process is a little different. The picture you see above is during the so called "2nd Party". But let's go in order...

First, the couple goes (alone, just the two of them) to the City Hall to bring their documents and sign that they want to be married. That's it. They are now married. No friends, no family, no witnesses. Just the two of them and the City Hall officials. 2 Minutes and it's done.

Then, after that, the couple will take some pictures togheter at the studio or on location, like the following one, in traditional White wedding Kimono.

After taking pictures, they will go home. The Ceremony will be held another day. The wedding ceremony has two options: Shinto at the shrine, or Western style at the church. The majority of the couples I think they go for the Western Style wedding. They are not Christian, but they go to a wedding Chapel. I don't even know if it's a real Chapel or just a replica... There are invited family members and members of the "1st Party".

At the first party, guests are expected to pay either 30,000 or 50,000 yen ($300 or $500). $100 is too little money, $200 is an even number so cannot be used because doubling it would become $400 that contains '4' that is pronounced similar as "death" (4 is pronounced "Shin" and death is pronounced "Shinu"). Therefore the ones left are $300 or $500. Of course you could go for the next odd one which is $700...but would be maybe too pricey.

After the ceremony, the member of the first party, will have lunch or dinner with the newlyweds. After that they'll go home or participate to the second party.

At the second party are all other friends not in the first category. At this party (that I've attended) I paid around $80 to participate. People is not expected to give gifts. The $80 is to pay for the refreshments and the Party Hall. Nice place, but the whole thing lasted about 2 hours, so is kind of a short party...we entered around 6.30 and at 9.00 PM everyone went home.

I was curious about the price for the whole thing, because in japan, people buy a "Wedding Package" that includes everything. From the first pictures, to the ceremony and parties. This is because they probably don't want to bother to book everything separately with the risk that something goes wrong.

So, enquiring a little bit among my friends, they said should be around 4,000,000 yen ($40,000). Mostly because of the place they have chosen (see picture above). In the end, they will get about half of it from gifts received...but still, quite an investment!