Job Discussion Forums

[Longing for Nippon]

Hello again,
I have been dating my Japanese girlfriend for about 2 years now. She recently gave me an ultimatum of a further 2 years dating then we would have to Marry. I understand her reasons for this and I happy with the idea.

My real question is how did you decide on where and how you would get married? Traditional Japanese? Western? Registers Office? Las Vegas style? Who traditionally pays? How much do they cost?

The other thing that seems like a worry is how the two families would communicate and get along. My family cant speak Japanese and hers cant speak english. I imagine there would be some strained moments or hilarous ones!

Any memories and descriptions of your weedings would be of great interest.

[Glenski]

How did I decide? My wife and I talked about it extensively.

Are you asking what the differences are among those options?

1. Go to the ward office and register yourselves (just like you would do in city hall in your home country). This is official and legal. No need for any ceremony.

2. Traditional Japanese wedding. Nowadays, more and more people fly to Hawaii. Believe it or not, it's cheaper than getting married here. The "traditional" way here has been either to go to a Shinto shrine with full kimono outfits and such, or to have a hotel arrange for everything, including the hotel's internal shrine facilities. Pretty expensive.

3. Traditional western style. You didn't say where the wedding would be. You can have a western style wedding in Japan if you like. We did. The minister conducted the ceremony in both languages, and the service was 90% western style. We did not go through a hotel, but used a marriage "agent" or wedding "company" (don't know the real name for it, but it organized everything for us, from ceremony to clothing rental to reception). We saved quite a bit.

Who pays? Depends on who wants to. My wife and I paid for practically everything. At the reception, guests gave gifts of money (traditional Japanese style) to help defray the costs.

[Longing for Nippon]

Thanks for the reply Glenski, I am aware of the differences.

I was more interested in the reasons why people make the decisions they do when planning weddings. I dont expect many mixed couples would choose a Japanese style wedding for financial reasons.
I dont reside in Japan anymore and would probably push for somewhere half way between Japan and the UK, I might just go for that Las Vegas Elvis wedding!
In all seriousness though its an important choice and will be one of the most important days of my life. It would be nice to hear how the families view it. Is there a certain amount of tradition that is followed by Japanese families? I am not a practicing Christian and dont have any religious requiremnets for the service. It would be nice to keep everyone happy.
I dont mean to pry or be nosey but it always nice to know how other people have gone about there relationships with Japanese nationals, it does toss up some difficulties from time to time.

[PAULH]

I got married in the chapel at my university in New Zealand.

Wife flew in the parents for the wedding and then we had a small reception. The wifes family threw a wedding party (p-ss up more like it with free flowing grog) at a local hotel.

I didnt have any money at the time, though I was working in Japan.
Japanese hotel weddings are expensive with a couple spending up to $US20-30,000 for a wedding and reception.

Choice will be based on what you can afford, whether you have a special place you want to marry. Japanese are not Christians, so weddings tend to have a Christmas-card feeling to them with a lot of superficial pageantry.

[Glenski]

Longing,

If it's a reason you are really looking for, it will be as individual as the person.

For me and my wife, we chose a western style wedding because she had always wanted to wear a western wedding dress and have a ceremony western style. I'm not even sure if our minister was real, but it didn't matter much to me. Not terribly religious anyway, and my wife certainly isn't Christian. Plus, we had researched hotel weddings for our price range and found them to be unsuitable in terms of what they offered for that price. We didn't skimp, but we were not about to pay the exhorbitant high hotel prices in our area. (For what it's worth, the reception was in a stylish French restaurant that President Clinton was going to go to a month or so earlier.)

As for what family thinks, mine could not attend, so they really had nothing to say about the whole thing. My parents got wedding photos and a video of the ceremony and reception. A few friends flew in and were more enamored with the simple fact that they were in Japan and that a friend of theirs was marrying a Japanese. Two of my former students gave speeches or helped translate speeches. My wife's family and friends seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. We dispensed with the tiered wedding cake in favor of one we could serve entirely; inside were two markers for people to show us in order to win prizes. Of course, we had already selected who they were going to be and knew which pieces to serve them. In keeping with Japanese tradition, I presented my wife's parents with a token gift and made a speech in English and Japanese. The whole affair appeared to please everyone immensely.

My cousin went the traditional Japanese route in getting married to his Japanese wife in Yokohama. I didn't attend, but they were each taken to the Kamakura shrine in separate rickshaws and each wore traditional clothing for the ceremony.

My wife's cousins had weddings recently. One flew to Hawaii for the ceremony and returned for the reception. The other had both events in a hotel in Sapporo. Whatever floats your boat, and whatever you figure you want to / can spend.

[Speed]

Longing For Nippon

J-wifey and I went traditional. Went to the biggest shrine in our city and paid about 35,000 yen ($330 USD) to reserve their premises and shinto priest.

For the reception, we reserved a great restaurant that we used to go to, for 3 hours. We paid the apx. 300,000 yen ($2,700 USD) with the money people gave us for our wedding, after the reception. (I knew the owner).

What did cost a lot of money was the renting of my wife's wedding kimono, my mon-tsuki hakama and the wedding photos.

Both our families speak Japanese so no problems there.

In Japan, usually the dude and his family is responsible for paying for the "happy" occassion.

Good luck.

[guest of Japan]

I just did the registration. About 6 months later we had a party in a nice restaurant for friends. The cost was about 300,000 yen. Everything became bigger than we could afford, so we asked our guests to contribute part of the dinner cost. We got a few nice gifts on top of that. In the end we paid about 100,000 yen.

My wife's family was very supportive of our way.

[bearcat]

[David W]

[Lynn]

We were living in New York City at the time so we did it at the city hall. The marriage license was $25 and the marriage certificate was $35 plus about $2 for the money orders because NYC clerk's office does not accept any other form of payment.

A few months later we went back to Japan to process his greencard. When we came back from the US embassy his parents had a cake waiting for us. It said, "omedetou". (I think they think we went to register) Oh well. By the way, technically, if we ever got divorced, my husband can go back to Japan without having the "batsu-ichi" status.

His mother's only request is that we get wedding photos taken, which I think is a great idea. I've worn kimono before and have to admit, I don't look too shabby.

If we ever get these photos taken I'll post them here.

[Brooks]

I chose Hawaii.
The minister did the service in English and Japanese.
We got married at the New Otani Hotel in Honolulu.
The staff are bilingual there.
The food was good.
Unfortunately it rained a bit, but that is good luck in Hawaii.

But some people said it was too far, so we had a reception in Kanagawa.
It took so long to plan it.
I wore a hakama and my wife a kimono.
People thought it was great. At my school a couple wedding pictures were put up in the main office and stayed there for a few days.

Some people said they were going to come but changed their minds.
All the guests got four gifts. We had almost sixty people.
We had karaoke, speeches, and people playing songs on a grand piano.

[sildentokyo1]

I'm getting married in Hawaii too--- for the same reasons as listed above---- but we're having parties in both the States and Tokyo for the people who can't make it to the ceremony.

[madeira]

I wanted a simple wedding in Hawaii, Tahoe or even Vegas...

Both families said NO! It would cause shame, it didn't follow tradition, relatives would be unhappy, etc., etc. No compromise was allowed on anything, even the live music at both events.

So, we had a Catholic Cathedral wedding and reception for 300 in Canada, and the full Shrine wedding here... although we were able to make it a 'close family only' event. Paid for plane tickets for many guests.

I think we spent somewhere around 4 million yen total. It could have been higher, but we saved by having my brother cater the Canadian wedding, and by buying kimonos/dresses/suits from ebay. We used our own cars and hired some drivers.

(Oh, if anyone wants to borrow a shiromuku, I have a nice one! Renting one for a day is about 40,000 yen. I didn't buy the wig or the jewellry, though... DO SO if possible. The jewellry alone was 30,000 for the day.)

Funny story... The menu for Canada was pretty simple to begin with... vegetables, potatoes, straachi, salmon my Dad caught, wine made by my Uncle...

About a week before the event, there was a truck crash near my parent's house. Nobody was hurt, but the 'cargo' spilled onto the road and was rapidly escaping or dying. Word got out and the cargo was quickly picked up by anyone with a vehicle.

I've never seen that much crab in one place in my life. It was delicious. Don't tell anyone!

Anyways, weddings are more for the family than for the couple involved, in my experience. I'm glad we were able to make everyone happy.

But yeah, we had the cash....