we’re ( considering) getting married in a not too distant future. I arrived to japan not so long ago and i don’t really have any friends, only collegues and aquaintances. Noone id really want to or feel comfortable to invite to a wedding. I’m not really that social and it doesnt bother me at all usually.
My girlfriend on the other hand has lots of friends. I know she’d want a “real” wedding, and I would want to do that for her sake. I’m not that keen though since it’s a bit weird because i have noone to invite to the wedding so it’d be weird having a wedding with just her friends. Anyone experienced a similar situation when coming to japan and getting married? how did you “solve” it? what options are there?
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I’m available for hire – price includes a proper backstory for our friendship. Getting slapped by you after joking about your wife is optional.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve been in Japan a few years already but I’m not the type of person to keep a lot of friendships going, I prefer to just have a small core of (literally less than 10) friends.
My girlfriend probably has dozens (maybe even 100) people she could/might invite. I totally agree it’s stressful because you have to balance the feeling of “I’m going to feel really awkward/lonely/let everyone know I’m a total loner” with not wanting to let my girlfriend suffer because of it. After all, it’s not her fault that I’m a bit of a loner.
In the end, I’m not sure I really mind that much, though. As long as we can have some nice wedding photos to keep forever, the wedding ceremony/party is often sort of the girl’s “thing” anyway. She’s probably dreaming about some wonderful wedding day in minute detail whereas I’m just happy to be together. No real preferences with regard to the ceremony itself.
I don’t live full time in Japan so I don’t have any friends here, luckily my mom could make it in but no one else could (visas/money). It’s pretty damn lonely and mostly ended up as a photo prop, but it was nice to see the wife and her family happy (and emotional).
People should understand as a foreigner you didn’t go to school here and not have many friends. I didn’t also have many. most of the guests were my wife’s friends and relatives. but I managed to invite few. and I also knew her friends and their families. so maybe you can befriend her friend’s families. Like if they are married you can get to know the husbands. you can then claim them as mutual friends.
You have the excuse of Covid and difficult flights etc. Perfect. I was living abroad (not in Japan) when I got married and we invited only a few relatives. My friends were grateful for not inviting them to a difficult wedding, with flights hotels and stuff, and we had an informal party when I got back home. You will make a bunch of new Japanese friends at your wedding. Congrats, by the way.
I had the same concerns too (small family/world-traveller) so I just talked to my then-fiancée (now wife) about them and the communication was great. I thought she would have wanted a large wedding too, but it turns out that she wanted just a small traditional ceremony of immediate family members at her city’s Shinto shrine. We then did an informal wedding party night and basically invited all family, friends, and co-workers we could. We rented out the jazz bar/restaurant where we’d first met through mutual acquaintances. It was great. I was so glad that I’d talked to her about my concerns, and the fact that her vision matched so closely with mine made me certain I was marrying the right person!
When we got married here, I invited my family from Australia. I found the biggest hurdle was the Japanese culture of ~~charging~~ expecting your guests to come with an envelope of money. I definitely couldn’t ask my family for money as they had already paid to come to Japan, and it’s definitely not a thing in Australia.
Luckily, my wife understood and we budgeted it in.
Doesn’t matter as long as you are happy 🙂
End of the day we are all gonna die at some point. Just enjoy time with your love ones that’s all it matters.
What’s a “real” wedding, especially in Japan? There are Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian-style weddings in Japan, amongst other types, including just filing the papers at City Hall.
Some “real weddings” don’t require any guests, or just have minimal guests.
Have you talked to her about it?
I’ve been to weddings like that. Sometimes the brides family sat on the grooms side, etc. If you are cool with it, totally fine. My wife invited more people to our wedding than I did but my family came and we had some mutual friends which switched to my side.
Several friends had multiple weddings. Japan and then one partner’s home country. Good way to invite your good friends.
I’ll go. Nobody can tell gaijin apart, and if i don’t anything about you they’ll chalk it up to a language barrier
Yeah I’ll go, been here 10 years and never been to a wedding here lol. Hope you find people to invite.
Step 1: Talk to her about it.
I had the opposite before moving here. All my family and friends, none of hers. She was a trooper and it went really well. My family rallied around her big time.
Our wedding was 100% my wife’s friends and family because it happened in 2020 after borders were closed.
It helps if you know her friends so they aren’t totally strangers. For the wedding ceremony itself we had my wife’s family sit on her side, and friends on my side (was Japanese style at shrine).
At reception we had video messages from my parents. We also had the venue broadcast the wedding ceremony itself on Zoom live.
I think people are quite understanding that people can’t get into Japan at the moment. For me if anything it was a good thing, because even if all of my good friends and family could come, it would be far less than my super social wife’s invitee list lol
There are services in Japan where you can rent friends and acquaintances for a day.
https://family-romance.com/wedding.html
I’ll go! We can give whatever story you want
I had the same thing with my ‘now’ wife.. she has a ton of friends.. family etc…. plus the money the guests pay is costly worried some friends wouldn’t want to…. so we got married in Paris..
I’ve a friend who was in your exact position. He ended up inviting two of his friends and the rest is family/the bride’s friends. It was fine.
Don’t worry, if this sub is any indication you’ll get divorced in a year
We had a really small, casual wedding with only l about 30 guests. Most of them were from my husbands side of the family!
I invited a a couple of friends that live in Japan and only my mum was able to travel for the wedding.
No one cared, everyone had a great time and my mum said it was the best wedding she’s ever attended! (Maybe she was just being nice)
I was honestly so busy on the day I probably wouldn’t have had time to talk to everyone anyway.
Which city. I’ll come
I got married in Japan and did the “standard” christian wedding with reception without me having Japanese friends. It was no big deal. Have you been to a Japanese wedding? It’s literally a ceremony and then a 2 hour reception where everyone except the bride and groom eat a 10 course meal while the bride and groom go through several events like speeches, cake cutting, costume changes, etc…
Other than dressing up, food and drink, it is quite different from a typical western wedding with very little time to socialize and such.
I just accepted my friends from x country will not be able/willing to come all the way to Japan for my wedding. That’s okay.
Make up a backstory and you are fine: I think everyone would understand that due to corona friends and family can’t come to Japan. And due to you are foreigner and focuse in your work and wife, you didn’t engage in too much local Friendship making.
With regard to the wedding party don’t over stress and try to flexible. When it comes to “where people should sit at the wedding” discuss with your wife to be flexible and have in the church her friends sit both left and right side.
Japanese want a marriage for the event experience not for deeper meanings so they should be flexible.
We had our ceremony on the beach in Hawaii. Just the two of us – no regrets. Nothing wrong with small, private ceremonies.
We didnt even do any wedding. Just registered at city hall and later on got some photos privately.
It was one of the manor upsides of getting married here. Straight forward(relatively speaking) and perfect reason to not invite people back home, and culturally acceptable
By the time I got married I’d been here a while but my wife and I still opted for a small, relatively DIY wedding with about 20 guests total.About 2/3 her family, 1/3 my family and a couple close friends who flew in for the wedding.
We had a nijikai where we invited friends (about 60 people, same ratio as wedding).
If you have close friends or family who would come in for the wedding, having a small ceremony means it wouldn’t feel so uneven. Though they probably can’t enter Japan right now because of travel restrictions, a lot of couples in Japan have the wedding ceremony up to a year after actually getting legally married.
As a fake wedding priest I can tell you it’s not that strange for the groom to have his mom and dad and nobody else present while the bride has no less than half her extended family and her whole college sorority in attendance.
My advice? Just invite your colleagues and acquaintances and suck it up for the party. It’s not that big of a deal.
Neither my wife nor I really wanted a big wedding. So we settled for a photo wedding. You can actually still invite people and have your friends and family come to take pictures. You can walk down the aisle, have the kiss, etc. Then you can all go out to eat afterwards, which you end up doing anyway in Japan after your initial wedding party.
#remindmeinayear
#divorce
#japanlife
Just ask this sub to show. It’ll be great.
Where and when is the wedding? If I can go and there is open bar, I’m there for you, man.
If you’re in Tokyo, I’ll come and pretend to be a long lost best friend