Tying the Knot in Japan: My Japanese Wedding Experience

Mars and I doing the candle lighting service;
an integral element in Japanese wedding services. 

Not too long ago, Mari and I finally had our wedding ceremony here in Tokyo, Japan. All in all, the whole process took about two months to prepare for, and while the preparation seemed like a royal pain in the a--, once the day actually came, I can say with an honest heart, that it was totally worth it- both in terms of the money we paid and the blood, sweat and tears that went into it. Originally, given how much they cost (on average you can expect to pay as much for your wedding as you would for a nice new car), we were both quite hesitant to spend the money. In the end though we decided to take the plunge, (albeit frugally), and it worked out quite well.

 One thing that's nice about having a wedding in Japan, is that guests are usually expected to bring at least $300 a head. This is because, given how expensive everything is here (and the fact that guests all receive gifts as well), you can expect to pay at least $280 per person who attends. I say this is nice because it means if you are careful about who you invite, you can pretty much cover the cost of the wedding itself. Conversely, the unfortunate thing about it is that you may not be able to invite everyone you want as well. (In our case, this meant I had to substantially limit the number of people coming in from the states for it- as they were already paying for plane tickets, and hotels, it seemed way too much to ask them to pay that as well).

The room that they gave us at Tokyo East 21 the night
before our wedding.

The view from Tokyo East 21 Hotel

 As for our ceremony, we decided to hold it at Hotel East 21 Tokyo. Literally, a 30 second walk from the office building Mari's father owns and works in, and in Toyocho, an area of town where her entire family resides. The process of the wedding preparation itself actually wasn't that difficult. For the most part, it revolved around having meeting after meeting about every possible detail you can imagine, and trying to make the best possible selections for our ceremony without falling for up-sell tactics or sacrificing logistical feasibility for romantic ideals. One example of this is the fact that the hotel has an absolutely amazing outdoor rooftop swimming pool, and we thought about having the ceremony there, but given the impossibility of predicting weather that far ahead, and my mother's health condition, logistically, it made more sense (and saved more money) to simply have it indoors, so that's what we opted for.

As for the ceremony itself, we decided on a traditional Japanese shinto ceremony. Again, as it would be done indoors, it would remove the weather variable, and as my family was flying in from the states, it would offer them a truly "Japanese" experience as well. This however, also meant another layer of complexity as it meant that I would have to do all my vows in old traditional Japanese (which meant that a lot of the words Id be trying to say don't even exist in dictionaries anymore). For myself, having to read those vows in unison with Mari was the most nerve-racking part of the whole experience- so much in fact that I actually messed up and missed a word reading the English translation part instead!

My Japanese wedding vows- took some serious practice!

Mari and I waiting for our Shinto wedding ceremony in Kimono;
Very cool, but also very tight and heavy- especially hers! 

After completing the Japanese ceremony, we went to join the reception, where we played our episode of House Hunters International, as well as a slide show of Mari and I's lives before and after we met. Beyond that, the rest of the time consisted of giving and/or listening to speeches, and people coming up to take pictures with us. About half way through the reception, as is typical of Japanese weddings, we had a costume change, and we switched from Japanese wedding Kimonos into western fashion, with myself in a tux and Mari in a wedding dress. About the only quam I had with the entire process was that, we took so many pictures with people that I didn't actually have time to eat any of the steak, salmon (or even wedding cake!) that everyone else was having. I think I spent about 30 minutes chewing on the same piece of beef in-between pictures.

The dinner I ate on my own after feeding all the guests steak, salmon and champagne.
I was starving! 

As for the preparation, without a doubt, the most time consuming process was subtitling House Hunters for Mari's family. (Which we showed while we were changing clothes). Even though it was really a b*tch to do, the process taught me well about subtitling, and now I have useable skill that I will absolutely be able to apply to film projects later as well.

Beyond that, the only other downer about the process was that my Dad couldn't be there. As he always was, Im absolutely sure he would have been the life of the party, and would have had everyone rolling on the floor with laughter at least once. If not from his own sense of humor, and antics (particularly if he was drinking) then from his incredibly loud, no holds-barred laugh itself. As Mari has also previously lost her Mom to cancer a few years before, both her and I, and my Mom and her Dad, all shed mutual tears together near the end of the ceremony.

The funny thing about planning a wedding is that so many people spend so much time obsessing over details, when really it isn't the details you really remember, it's the feelings. Hell, my wedding just finished a few hours ago, and I've already forgotten half of the things we had to make decisions about. What I will never forget however is the feeling of support from my friends, my Moms telling me she loves me, and Mari's family (as well as the larger Japanese community) accepting me as more or less one of them. Those, more than anything are the things that made the day for me, and as cool as everything else was, those are the things I will carry with me hereafter.