The Union of Chikao & Mai: Japanese Wedding #1
I met Mr. Chikao Fukuda back in January of 2007, halfway through my first year in Japan. The music teacher at one of my junior high schools was a mutual friend of ours, and she arranged a skiing trip for which Chikao would be driving and making all the other arrangements…..and for which she didn’t even come! There were 7 people in Chikao’s car in the end, driving together to this ski trip (3 foreigners, my friend from Tokyo, 2 other teachers from my school and Chikao). It wasn’t until months after this trip that I found out Chikao hadn’t known any of us before he picked us all up the morning we left for the ski resort. This is how I was introduced to the man I called Mr. Fukuda for 2 years because I never knew his first name.
The spring after this ski trip, our mutual music teacher friend, Yoshika, asked Chikao if she, myself, and the 2 other teachers from the ski trip (Kumi and Akiko), could join his town hall soft volleyball team. Yoshika, Kumi, Akiko and I had been playing soft volleyball once a week with a few of the other younger teachers at our school for a few months. But when the school year ended in March, we lost most of our members and didn’t have enough to continuing playing on our own. Graciously, Chikao welcomed us with open arms, and thus began my stint on the RTS (Receive, Toss, Spike…the Japanese use of the word “toss” while playing sports is a long story) Town Hall Soft Volleyball Team.
The rest of that story might be interesting on it’s own, but to get to the meat of this particular blog, we’ll skip forward 2 years, during which time I continued to go regularly to RTS practices, play with them during the bi-annual Town Hall Worker Soft Volleyball Tournaments (one of the goofiest things I’ve ever encountered), have dinner parties with them, and go skiing with many of their members. Chikao is quite the character. He loves to joke around, and the fact that we couldn’t communicate verbally for the first few months after we met didn’t stop him from kidding around incessantly. One of my fondest memories from Japan will always be his grasshopper way of running after every shanked ball during soft volleyball practice games. Anyway, he was very easy to get along with from the start, was great at planning and loved to get people together for things, didn’t mind being in charge, and obviously started studying English a little again because after awhile I noticed he was understanding more and more of what I was saying in English (as long as I kept it simple) and could gradually answer better in English as well! Now that’s a friend!
And during the years that I’ve known Chikao, he’s always been on the prowl for a wife. It’s been a funny experience to follow along on this project of his. But you can imagine how thrilled I was when in late-January of this year, I walked into one of our soft volleyball practices, not having seen anyone since well before the holidays, and one of the first things out of his mouth (in Japanese), was, “Mandy, I’m getting married.” Finally, something had stuck. I hadn’t met his fiancée before then, but had heard that she was a friend of a friend, and they had been introduced to each other through this mutual friend. I met her about a month later, when she came to our soft volleyball tournament. The second I was introduced to her, I could tell she was the perfect match for Chikao! And they were kind enough to invite me to their wedding.
June 14th was the big day, and I was really excited. I hope that they would have invited me anyway, but I can’t help shake the feeling that I kind of invited myself because from the second Chikao said he was getting married, I started spouting off about how excited I was that I was finally going to witness a Japanese wedding. I’d been in the right place at the right time at random shrines a few times, getting a chance to witness the processional following a Shinto-style wedding, with the huge white hats for the women, their faces painted white, everyone in kimonos, someone holding the bright, red, paper umbrella over the bride. I wanted to see the inner workings of what happened during the actual Shinto marriage ceremony, not just the post-processional from the “chapel.” And I’m still waiting to witness that. Because Chikao and his (now) wife, Mai, had a more modern wedding, as is all the rage nowadays, where the couple wear western-style wedding gear (tuxedo and white dress), get married in a chapel, have the guests sing Christian songs translated into Japanese, etc. I think it’s hilarious that this is such a novelty for younger Japanese couples, almost none of whom are ever actually Christian. Chikao and Mai aren’t, I can tell you that! How funny would it be if, for example, Americans started having Buddhist wedding ceremonies, not because they wanted to become Buddhist, but because they simply thought the religion’s wedding ceremonies were cool.
It was really nice that Chikao & Mai’s wedding was my first experience, because I knew at least half the people in attendance. They were primarily all somehow related to work with/through the Town Hall. So I had plenty of people I could go to to ask questions about how the whole thing worked. For example, I wasn’t quite sure if wedding attire needed to be of a certain hue, or hem/sleeve length (you never know in societies that have a much more defined modesty clause!). There’s also the issue of “the wedding present.” I’d read/heard over the years that one is supposed to present the wedding couple with money, that the bills needed to be new, and that there was a certain type of envelope you should present the money in. My big questions about this process were 1. As a foreigner and a shorter-term friend, how much money was I expected to give? 2. How the heck am I going to get to a bank during their open hours to get brand-new bills (there’s no bank in my town)?! 3. What do these wedding money envelopes look like?!?!
Luckily, my former neighbor and good friend, Futaba, who was also a very good friend of Chikao’s was going to the wedding also. I took photos of the dresses I’d brought to Japan with me (yes, dresses was plural, believe it or not I actually own more than 1), emailed them to her, she and her mother scrutinized them for me and gave me advice on which was most suitable (you’re not supposed to wear white or be too dressy, as not to distract from the bride, same as the States, I think!). I did think it was funny though, that they initially told me that the bright orange and pink dress (which I wore to my brother’s wedding…those of you there I’m sure remember it because I looked like a member of the “Laugh In” show). I was quite surprised that they had approved that dress when it really did seem counter to the usual Japanese dress sense (darker colors). But then again, it was a wedding, and what did I know about Japanese wedding attire? I decided against it in the end in favor of a dress I hadn’t worn since my undergrad senior year swing dance party (dark maroon, velvety-looking, short sleeves, faux-turtleneck, knee-length), and BOY am I glad I did! All the other women were also dressed in dark dresses. I think I would have been highly entertaining for the other attendees had I worn the Laugh-In dress, and I think Chikao and Mai would have gotten a kick out of it too, but I don’t think I’d have been comfortable making that many waves at a formal ritual event whose protocol I was sorely unfamiliar with.
The money-gift issue. Futaba also helped me with that. We met one weekend prior to the wedding and discussed how much money we should give. Japan is big on doing things in odd-numbers, not so much even numbers. So, following suit, for weddings, you should give 10,000, 30,000 or 50,000yen (or more), depending on how well you know the couple, how old you are and what your rank is in society. The mayor of my town (who WAS actually in attendance at the wedding and reception) therefore would be expected to pay WAY more than me, as a lowly foreigner ALT who hadn’t been around all that long. The problem is that 10,000yen is equivalent to about US$100, 30,000yen = US$300 and so on. That’s a lot of mullah to be shelling out! Although, with the Japanese sense of protocol taking hold of me, I felt that 10,000yen was too little, but 30,000yen was way too much for me. Futaba felt the same. She said that both she and her mother agreed that nowadays it wasn’t quite as fauxpax for younger generations to give an even-numbered amount of money as a wedding present. We considered it, but funnily enough, neither one of us felt comfortable doing that! In the end, Futaba came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s each give 15,000yen, pool our money, and put it in the same envelope! And that’s what we did. And I am very happy with that decision. ;-) That way, Futaba bought the envelope as well, and I didn’t have to worry about getting the wrong one. Hee hee!
The wedding and reception ended up being very similar to what I’d experienced in North America, except for the fact that many weddings are done by hotels as package deals, and everything can be done in one place, as well as planned in one place! I believe this is how it happens: You work with a wedding planner, chose invitations, flowers, chapel and reception hall decorations, food, post wedding gifts, etc (I’ll explain the latter one later) from the hotel’s catalogue/offerings, and the hotel basically plans everything for you. I’m not quite sure how the clothing for the bride and groom are chosen, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you can “order” that through the hotel too (Japan is just SO big into sets and package deals, you can find them for almost anything!). So anyway, Yoshika and I (that would be the music teacher mutual friend I mentioned at the beginning of the blog) arrived together at the hotel site for the wedding (she was nice enough to drive me, bless her heart!). In the lobby there was a sign listing Chikao & Mai’s wedding information, so we followed the instructions up a few floors to a waiting area outside the reception hall. There was a bar in one corner serving simple alcohols and juice, couches and comfy chairs everywhere for guests to lounge in while waiting for the wedding ceremony to start. There were two tables set up outside the doors to the reception hall where one could find the guest books and the basket in which one was to leave their envelope. One table was manned by female friends of the bride, who took signatures of friends of the brides as well as friends of the bride money cards. The other table was manned by male friends of the groom doing the same thing for that side. I thought that was interesting. There was also a table that had some memorabilia and photos of the couple set up, including a digital photo album that had been made by one of the RTS soft volleyball team members (and for which I had provided some photos of my own of events with Chikao and the volleyball team, so that was fun!).
When it was time for the wedding ceremony to start, someone on the hotel staff came up to the waiting area and told us to follow them down a flight or two to the chapel, which is basically the set-up you get with hospital chapels in the States….anyway, that’s what it reminded me of. I think there were maybe 100 people in the chapel (it was small, so it looked filled to capacity!). We sat in pews, watched the groom nervously stand at the front of the chapel while the bride walked up the aisle with her father from the back of the chapel. But here was an interesting twist. The father and bride walked together to about 2/3rds of the way to the alter and stopped. The groom then came forward to meet them, they all bowed to each other, then the groom walked the bride the rest of the way to the alter while the father went somewhere (to the back or front, I don’t remember) to sit down. The presiding minister was western, but did the ceremony in mostly Japanese (with some English). He gave a little speech, I think vows were exchanged, at two intervals we sang songs, one of which was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (in Japanese, at a non-Christian-Christian wedding ceremony where there might have been 1 Christian in the crowd (me)…I love the way the world works sometimes!). It was a pretty short ceremony, and at the end the bride and groom, in usual western fashion, were told to kiss. I was really curious about this particular point in the ceremony as well, because PDA is still not widely accepted in Japan. People are starting to relax a little about it, especially youngsters, but still, generally the most you’ll ever see in public are couples slightly-rigidly holding hands. And here two 30-somethings are being asked to kiss in front of a hundred people. Hee hee. And as expected, they performed the task as quickly as possible to get it over and done with. Another slightly unique aspect of the Japanese-western wedding ceremony is that they actually take time during the ceremony to sign the marriage license…however, I didn’t completely understand that part, because Chikao told me that they went to the government building to sign the licenses back at the beginning of June, hence they were legally married long before they actually had the whole ceremony thing.
Anyway, so after the PDA was out of the way, the couple were presented as such to those in the audience, they walked down the aisle, out the door and disappeared. Then the guests dispersed. As we were filing from the chapel back up the stairs to the waiting area, Chikao appeared. I forgot to mention that he wore a white tux. So he appears out of some room down the hall, peaking around like a little kid. Naturally those of us lucky enough to be around when he made his appearance took the opportunity for an impromptu photo shoot. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that, because he looked really nervous in the chapel, but it was very quickly evident that the normal Chikao was back, posing in goofy styles with people, introducing everyone to his mother, etc.
After a short wait, we were allowed to enter the reception hall. Seats were assigned and posted in a very elaborate seating chart on the inside of a pamphlet we received when we first arrived and handed over our money card, which also had profiles of the couple inside. While we waited for the couple to enter, we amused ourselves by reading silly things they had said about themselves and each other in their profiles, laughed at differences (Chikao wanted 2 kids, Mai wanted 4), and reminisced about past experiences with them.
The Japanese wedding reception is an interesting affair. It’s quite structured, and in that way very different from a typical western wedding reception. There’s a limited time for the reception as well, 2-3 hours. It starts off with the couple entering, in this particular circumstance in the same clothes they were married in. There’s an emcee provided by the hotel (part of the package deal apparently), so they do a little speech about the day, the couple. I think their profiles were read. Speeches are given by prominent guests, for example the mayor of Tokigawa gave a speech, as well as the Vice-Mayor (whatever you call him), and one or two people spoke from the bride’s side as well. There was a cutting of the cake, except I don’t think they ever actually served the cake….it seemed more of a photo opportunity to capture the couple doing something wedding-ish. But once the food starts to be served, the couple are escorted out of the reception hall by various family members a few times (with about 45 minutes between each departure, I suppose) to change clothes. Here’s another interesting twist to the reception: in Japan, wedding couples change clothes 2-3 times throughout the reception. No doubt something established by wedding clothing shop providers! In this particular circumstance, Chikao & Mai changed first from their wedding tux and dress into traditional Japanese male and female kimonos. During their second change, Mai came in in a red, 17th-century-Spanish-esque-looking dress with a large flower in her hair (she kind of reminded me of a really classy-looking flamenco dancer), Chikao in a black tux, but the details I don’t remember because he was obviously much less stunning or colorful as Mai. When they came in in the Spanish-looking clothes, they picked up a long fire-lighter thing, and went around to each table lighting the center candles on each. That was a really neat moment….and a great photo-op!!!
In between all the costume changes, friends of both the bride and the groom do skits. A few of Mai’s high school (or university?) friends did a skit that I didn’t really understand, but others said it was cute (naturally!). Chikao is part of my town’s volunteer firefighting corps, so some of the members of his corps group dressed up in their firefighting gear and did a drill of sorts through the length of the reception hall to deliver a bottle of beer or Japanese sake to Chikao, which he was then made to chug in front of everyone. Hee hee! It was really funny…but probably only if you’ve seen Japanese volunteer firefighting corps drills before. There were also other speeches by friends of the bride (tearful ones). Towards the very end, Mai read a letter she had written to her new in-laws and her own parents, while Chikao held the microphone. While she read the letter from the front of the reception hall, both sets of parents stood side-by-side at the back of the hall. When she finished reading, she and Chikao both took matching bouquets of flowers from the emcee, walked together to the back of the hall, and presented the flowers to their parents. There was one last presentation of the parents and the newlyweds standing together at the back of the hall, then they filed out, and that indicated the end of the reception.
At some point before the end of the reception though, the reception hall staff someone snuck around and put large bags next to/behind everyone’s chairs. These were the obligatory wedding presents GIVEN TO THE GUESTS FROM THE WEDDING COUPLE. From Chikao & Mai, we all received one package of premium snack cakes and cookies, one package of what I’m assuming are high-quality fish flakes (which are used on everything in Japan), and one heavier box, nicely wrapped and presented in a very nice box…a catalogue. I’m assuming this catalogue is for some sort of specialty wedding-gift-provider company. There’s an order form accompanying the catalogue and each wedding guest gets to order one item of their choice from the catalogue! There are multiple sections, and you can order anything from food to discount tickets for hot springs, hotels, etc. If I ever find the order form I filled out before I went to the States for the summer but didn’t mail because the item would have arrived while I was gone and been sent back to the company before I could pick it up from the post office, I will hopefully soon be the owner of a small camping grill. However, if I never find my order form, I’ve been told that after 6 months, if a guest doesn’t order anything, they are sent the wedding couple’s default gift choice. Interesting, isn’t it?!
So, if you think that whole wedding present thing sounds really cool, but insanely expensive, think back to how much I mentioned you are expected to give as a wedding present. Putting two and two together now?! That’s right…you’re wedding present is basically your “fee” for attending the wedding. I’ve read that it’s done in order to support the wedding couple, so that they don’t start their new life together deeply in debt. Of course we kind of do the same thing when we give monetary gifts to wedding couples in the U.S., and I think it’s a much better idea than giving a couple their 10th crock-pot, but only in Japan can one expect wedding guests to unquestioningly give $100-500 to attend a wedding ceremony.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, there’s no “and guest” for Japanese wedding invitations. If YOU are sent a wedding invitation, even if you’re married with 20 kids, there’s no “bring the family too” clause. Only the person who receives the wedding invitation can attend the wedding. Which is why I was SO relieved that I knew so many people attending my first Japanese wedding experience! Another interesting guest factoid (that I read, so it hasn’t been verbally confirmed by anyone): apparently female friends of the groom and male friends of the bride are typically not invited to the actual wedding ceremony (and hence probably not to the reception either). It’s seen as being in poor taste. I’m glad both Chikao & Mai were more than happy to toss this rule out the window! Chikao has many female friends and co-workers who were invited to the ceremony and reception. However, because of this clause (not that anyone really needs an excuse to party more), there is usually 1 “after-party” following the reception, to which those who attended the ceremony and reception can attend as well as those who weren’t invited to wedding/reception (a.k.a. female friends of the groom, male friends of the bride, etc). I went to the first after party. It was in a smaller room in a lower-level, and basically it was just a bunch of people hanging out eating more, drinking more. The couple had changed into “traveling clothes” and looked WAY more comfortable! There were a few more speeches and collective gift presentations, oh, and bingo, of course. Again, this party had a bonafide ending time, 2 hours in length. Apparently there was a 2nd after party, but I think it was just the groom’s buddies wanting to go out for more drinking and karaoke. So, Yoshika and I went home headed home just as it started to pour buckets.
Thus endeth my first Japanese wedding experience.
The spring after this ski trip, our mutual music teacher friend, Yoshika, asked Chikao if she, myself, and the 2 other teachers from the ski trip (Kumi and Akiko), could join his town hall soft volleyball team. Yoshika, Kumi, Akiko and I had been playing soft volleyball once a week with a few of the other younger teachers at our school for a few months. But when the school year ended in March, we lost most of our members and didn’t have enough to continuing playing on our own. Graciously, Chikao welcomed us with open arms, and thus began my stint on the RTS (Receive, Toss, Spike…the Japanese use of the word “toss” while playing sports is a long story) Town Hall Soft Volleyball Team.
The rest of that story might be interesting on it’s own, but to get to the meat of this particular blog, we’ll skip forward 2 years, during which time I continued to go regularly to RTS practices, play with them during the bi-annual Town Hall Worker Soft Volleyball Tournaments (one of the goofiest things I’ve ever encountered), have dinner parties with them, and go skiing with many of their members. Chikao is quite the character. He loves to joke around, and the fact that we couldn’t communicate verbally for the first few months after we met didn’t stop him from kidding around incessantly. One of my fondest memories from Japan will always be his grasshopper way of running after every shanked ball during soft volleyball practice games. Anyway, he was very easy to get along with from the start, was great at planning and loved to get people together for things, didn’t mind being in charge, and obviously started studying English a little again because after awhile I noticed he was understanding more and more of what I was saying in English (as long as I kept it simple) and could gradually answer better in English as well! Now that’s a friend!
And during the years that I’ve known Chikao, he’s always been on the prowl for a wife. It’s been a funny experience to follow along on this project of his. But you can imagine how thrilled I was when in late-January of this year, I walked into one of our soft volleyball practices, not having seen anyone since well before the holidays, and one of the first things out of his mouth (in Japanese), was, “Mandy, I’m getting married.” Finally, something had stuck. I hadn’t met his fiancée before then, but had heard that she was a friend of a friend, and they had been introduced to each other through this mutual friend. I met her about a month later, when she came to our soft volleyball tournament. The second I was introduced to her, I could tell she was the perfect match for Chikao! And they were kind enough to invite me to their wedding.
June 14th was the big day, and I was really excited. I hope that they would have invited me anyway, but I can’t help shake the feeling that I kind of invited myself because from the second Chikao said he was getting married, I started spouting off about how excited I was that I was finally going to witness a Japanese wedding. I’d been in the right place at the right time at random shrines a few times, getting a chance to witness the processional following a Shinto-style wedding, with the huge white hats for the women, their faces painted white, everyone in kimonos, someone holding the bright, red, paper umbrella over the bride. I wanted to see the inner workings of what happened during the actual Shinto marriage ceremony, not just the post-processional from the “chapel.” And I’m still waiting to witness that. Because Chikao and his (now) wife, Mai, had a more modern wedding, as is all the rage nowadays, where the couple wear western-style wedding gear (tuxedo and white dress), get married in a chapel, have the guests sing Christian songs translated into Japanese, etc. I think it’s hilarious that this is such a novelty for younger Japanese couples, almost none of whom are ever actually Christian. Chikao and Mai aren’t, I can tell you that! How funny would it be if, for example, Americans started having Buddhist wedding ceremonies, not because they wanted to become Buddhist, but because they simply thought the religion’s wedding ceremonies were cool.
It was really nice that Chikao & Mai’s wedding was my first experience, because I knew at least half the people in attendance. They were primarily all somehow related to work with/through the Town Hall. So I had plenty of people I could go to to ask questions about how the whole thing worked. For example, I wasn’t quite sure if wedding attire needed to be of a certain hue, or hem/sleeve length (you never know in societies that have a much more defined modesty clause!). There’s also the issue of “the wedding present.” I’d read/heard over the years that one is supposed to present the wedding couple with money, that the bills needed to be new, and that there was a certain type of envelope you should present the money in. My big questions about this process were 1. As a foreigner and a shorter-term friend, how much money was I expected to give? 2. How the heck am I going to get to a bank during their open hours to get brand-new bills (there’s no bank in my town)?! 3. What do these wedding money envelopes look like?!?!
Luckily, my former neighbor and good friend, Futaba, who was also a very good friend of Chikao’s was going to the wedding also. I took photos of the dresses I’d brought to Japan with me (yes, dresses was plural, believe it or not I actually own more than 1), emailed them to her, she and her mother scrutinized them for me and gave me advice on which was most suitable (you’re not supposed to wear white or be too dressy, as not to distract from the bride, same as the States, I think!). I did think it was funny though, that they initially told me that the bright orange and pink dress (which I wore to my brother’s wedding…those of you there I’m sure remember it because I looked like a member of the “Laugh In” show). I was quite surprised that they had approved that dress when it really did seem counter to the usual Japanese dress sense (darker colors). But then again, it was a wedding, and what did I know about Japanese wedding attire? I decided against it in the end in favor of a dress I hadn’t worn since my undergrad senior year swing dance party (dark maroon, velvety-looking, short sleeves, faux-turtleneck, knee-length), and BOY am I glad I did! All the other women were also dressed in dark dresses. I think I would have been highly entertaining for the other attendees had I worn the Laugh-In dress, and I think Chikao and Mai would have gotten a kick out of it too, but I don’t think I’d have been comfortable making that many waves at a formal ritual event whose protocol I was sorely unfamiliar with.
The money-gift issue. Futaba also helped me with that. We met one weekend prior to the wedding and discussed how much money we should give. Japan is big on doing things in odd-numbers, not so much even numbers. So, following suit, for weddings, you should give 10,000, 30,000 or 50,000yen (or more), depending on how well you know the couple, how old you are and what your rank is in society. The mayor of my town (who WAS actually in attendance at the wedding and reception) therefore would be expected to pay WAY more than me, as a lowly foreigner ALT who hadn’t been around all that long. The problem is that 10,000yen is equivalent to about US$100, 30,000yen = US$300 and so on. That’s a lot of mullah to be shelling out! Although, with the Japanese sense of protocol taking hold of me, I felt that 10,000yen was too little, but 30,000yen was way too much for me. Futaba felt the same. She said that both she and her mother agreed that nowadays it wasn’t quite as fauxpax for younger generations to give an even-numbered amount of money as a wedding present. We considered it, but funnily enough, neither one of us felt comfortable doing that! In the end, Futaba came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s each give 15,000yen, pool our money, and put it in the same envelope! And that’s what we did. And I am very happy with that decision. ;-) That way, Futaba bought the envelope as well, and I didn’t have to worry about getting the wrong one. Hee hee!
The wedding and reception ended up being very similar to what I’d experienced in North America, except for the fact that many weddings are done by hotels as package deals, and everything can be done in one place, as well as planned in one place! I believe this is how it happens: You work with a wedding planner, chose invitations, flowers, chapel and reception hall decorations, food, post wedding gifts, etc (I’ll explain the latter one later) from the hotel’s catalogue/offerings, and the hotel basically plans everything for you. I’m not quite sure how the clothing for the bride and groom are chosen, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you can “order” that through the hotel too (Japan is just SO big into sets and package deals, you can find them for almost anything!). So anyway, Yoshika and I (that would be the music teacher mutual friend I mentioned at the beginning of the blog) arrived together at the hotel site for the wedding (she was nice enough to drive me, bless her heart!). In the lobby there was a sign listing Chikao & Mai’s wedding information, so we followed the instructions up a few floors to a waiting area outside the reception hall. There was a bar in one corner serving simple alcohols and juice, couches and comfy chairs everywhere for guests to lounge in while waiting for the wedding ceremony to start. There were two tables set up outside the doors to the reception hall where one could find the guest books and the basket in which one was to leave their envelope. One table was manned by female friends of the bride, who took signatures of friends of the brides as well as friends of the bride money cards. The other table was manned by male friends of the groom doing the same thing for that side. I thought that was interesting. There was also a table that had some memorabilia and photos of the couple set up, including a digital photo album that had been made by one of the RTS soft volleyball team members (and for which I had provided some photos of my own of events with Chikao and the volleyball team, so that was fun!).
When it was time for the wedding ceremony to start, someone on the hotel staff came up to the waiting area and told us to follow them down a flight or two to the chapel, which is basically the set-up you get with hospital chapels in the States….anyway, that’s what it reminded me of. I think there were maybe 100 people in the chapel (it was small, so it looked filled to capacity!). We sat in pews, watched the groom nervously stand at the front of the chapel while the bride walked up the aisle with her father from the back of the chapel. But here was an interesting twist. The father and bride walked together to about 2/3rds of the way to the alter and stopped. The groom then came forward to meet them, they all bowed to each other, then the groom walked the bride the rest of the way to the alter while the father went somewhere (to the back or front, I don’t remember) to sit down. The presiding minister was western, but did the ceremony in mostly Japanese (with some English). He gave a little speech, I think vows were exchanged, at two intervals we sang songs, one of which was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (in Japanese, at a non-Christian-Christian wedding ceremony where there might have been 1 Christian in the crowd (me)…I love the way the world works sometimes!). It was a pretty short ceremony, and at the end the bride and groom, in usual western fashion, were told to kiss. I was really curious about this particular point in the ceremony as well, because PDA is still not widely accepted in Japan. People are starting to relax a little about it, especially youngsters, but still, generally the most you’ll ever see in public are couples slightly-rigidly holding hands. And here two 30-somethings are being asked to kiss in front of a hundred people. Hee hee. And as expected, they performed the task as quickly as possible to get it over and done with. Another slightly unique aspect of the Japanese-western wedding ceremony is that they actually take time during the ceremony to sign the marriage license…however, I didn’t completely understand that part, because Chikao told me that they went to the government building to sign the licenses back at the beginning of June, hence they were legally married long before they actually had the whole ceremony thing.
Anyway, so after the PDA was out of the way, the couple were presented as such to those in the audience, they walked down the aisle, out the door and disappeared. Then the guests dispersed. As we were filing from the chapel back up the stairs to the waiting area, Chikao appeared. I forgot to mention that he wore a white tux. So he appears out of some room down the hall, peaking around like a little kid. Naturally those of us lucky enough to be around when he made his appearance took the opportunity for an impromptu photo shoot. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that, because he looked really nervous in the chapel, but it was very quickly evident that the normal Chikao was back, posing in goofy styles with people, introducing everyone to his mother, etc.
After a short wait, we were allowed to enter the reception hall. Seats were assigned and posted in a very elaborate seating chart on the inside of a pamphlet we received when we first arrived and handed over our money card, which also had profiles of the couple inside. While we waited for the couple to enter, we amused ourselves by reading silly things they had said about themselves and each other in their profiles, laughed at differences (Chikao wanted 2 kids, Mai wanted 4), and reminisced about past experiences with them.
The Japanese wedding reception is an interesting affair. It’s quite structured, and in that way very different from a typical western wedding reception. There’s a limited time for the reception as well, 2-3 hours. It starts off with the couple entering, in this particular circumstance in the same clothes they were married in. There’s an emcee provided by the hotel (part of the package deal apparently), so they do a little speech about the day, the couple. I think their profiles were read. Speeches are given by prominent guests, for example the mayor of Tokigawa gave a speech, as well as the Vice-Mayor (whatever you call him), and one or two people spoke from the bride’s side as well. There was a cutting of the cake, except I don’t think they ever actually served the cake….it seemed more of a photo opportunity to capture the couple doing something wedding-ish. But once the food starts to be served, the couple are escorted out of the reception hall by various family members a few times (with about 45 minutes between each departure, I suppose) to change clothes. Here’s another interesting twist to the reception: in Japan, wedding couples change clothes 2-3 times throughout the reception. No doubt something established by wedding clothing shop providers! In this particular circumstance, Chikao & Mai changed first from their wedding tux and dress into traditional Japanese male and female kimonos. During their second change, Mai came in in a red, 17th-century-Spanish-esque-looking dress with a large flower in her hair (she kind of reminded me of a really classy-looking flamenco dancer), Chikao in a black tux, but the details I don’t remember because he was obviously much less stunning or colorful as Mai. When they came in in the Spanish-looking clothes, they picked up a long fire-lighter thing, and went around to each table lighting the center candles on each. That was a really neat moment….and a great photo-op!!!
In between all the costume changes, friends of both the bride and the groom do skits. A few of Mai’s high school (or university?) friends did a skit that I didn’t really understand, but others said it was cute (naturally!). Chikao is part of my town’s volunteer firefighting corps, so some of the members of his corps group dressed up in their firefighting gear and did a drill of sorts through the length of the reception hall to deliver a bottle of beer or Japanese sake to Chikao, which he was then made to chug in front of everyone. Hee hee! It was really funny…but probably only if you’ve seen Japanese volunteer firefighting corps drills before. There were also other speeches by friends of the bride (tearful ones). Towards the very end, Mai read a letter she had written to her new in-laws and her own parents, while Chikao held the microphone. While she read the letter from the front of the reception hall, both sets of parents stood side-by-side at the back of the hall. When she finished reading, she and Chikao both took matching bouquets of flowers from the emcee, walked together to the back of the hall, and presented the flowers to their parents. There was one last presentation of the parents and the newlyweds standing together at the back of the hall, then they filed out, and that indicated the end of the reception.
At some point before the end of the reception though, the reception hall staff someone snuck around and put large bags next to/behind everyone’s chairs. These were the obligatory wedding presents GIVEN TO THE GUESTS FROM THE WEDDING COUPLE. From Chikao & Mai, we all received one package of premium snack cakes and cookies, one package of what I’m assuming are high-quality fish flakes (which are used on everything in Japan), and one heavier box, nicely wrapped and presented in a very nice box…a catalogue. I’m assuming this catalogue is for some sort of specialty wedding-gift-provider company. There’s an order form accompanying the catalogue and each wedding guest gets to order one item of their choice from the catalogue! There are multiple sections, and you can order anything from food to discount tickets for hot springs, hotels, etc. If I ever find the order form I filled out before I went to the States for the summer but didn’t mail because the item would have arrived while I was gone and been sent back to the company before I could pick it up from the post office, I will hopefully soon be the owner of a small camping grill. However, if I never find my order form, I’ve been told that after 6 months, if a guest doesn’t order anything, they are sent the wedding couple’s default gift choice. Interesting, isn’t it?!
So, if you think that whole wedding present thing sounds really cool, but insanely expensive, think back to how much I mentioned you are expected to give as a wedding present. Putting two and two together now?! That’s right…you’re wedding present is basically your “fee” for attending the wedding. I’ve read that it’s done in order to support the wedding couple, so that they don’t start their new life together deeply in debt. Of course we kind of do the same thing when we give monetary gifts to wedding couples in the U.S., and I think it’s a much better idea than giving a couple their 10th crock-pot, but only in Japan can one expect wedding guests to unquestioningly give $100-500 to attend a wedding ceremony.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, there’s no “and guest” for Japanese wedding invitations. If YOU are sent a wedding invitation, even if you’re married with 20 kids, there’s no “bring the family too” clause. Only the person who receives the wedding invitation can attend the wedding. Which is why I was SO relieved that I knew so many people attending my first Japanese wedding experience! Another interesting guest factoid (that I read, so it hasn’t been verbally confirmed by anyone): apparently female friends of the groom and male friends of the bride are typically not invited to the actual wedding ceremony (and hence probably not to the reception either). It’s seen as being in poor taste. I’m glad both Chikao & Mai were more than happy to toss this rule out the window! Chikao has many female friends and co-workers who were invited to the ceremony and reception. However, because of this clause (not that anyone really needs an excuse to party more), there is usually 1 “after-party” following the reception, to which those who attended the ceremony and reception can attend as well as those who weren’t invited to wedding/reception (a.k.a. female friends of the groom, male friends of the bride, etc). I went to the first after party. It was in a smaller room in a lower-level, and basically it was just a bunch of people hanging out eating more, drinking more. The couple had changed into “traveling clothes” and looked WAY more comfortable! There were a few more speeches and collective gift presentations, oh, and bingo, of course. Again, this party had a bonafide ending time, 2 hours in length. Apparently there was a 2nd after party, but I think it was just the groom’s buddies wanting to go out for more drinking and karaoke. So, Yoshika and I went home headed home just as it started to pour buckets.
Thus endeth my first Japanese wedding experience.
posted by Mandy | 8:51 PM
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