Hey, recently got engaged with my Japanese partner and am starting to plan a small wedding (20 people) in Kyoto, where we live, but every place we’ve been to says it’ll cost around 1,500,000 yen, which for a small wedding seems pretty expensive. I’m curious about other foreigner’s experience getting married in Japan.
What did you do when you got married?
How much did it cost?
Any suggestions for location?
Any ideas for activities to entertain our guests? (Her family only speaks Japanese, mine only English, so communication will be a challenge)
I’d appreciate all the help I can get! 😅
23 comments
Initial quote was 1,000,000 for me. quickly ballooned to 3,000,000. though usually guests and relatives give monetary gifts that could eventually pay half of it.
if you want less costly wedding. probably arrange most of it. find a big restaurant or garden you can rent full and arrange other things.
I assume you’re talking about the chapel weddings. The prices they quote usually include the nijikai, which is a large chunk of the expenses. You can save a lot of money by skipping the nijikai through the venue and planning your own.
The Kitayama area is pretty much wedding central in Kyoto.
We had kind of a two part wedding.
1 was at a shrine here in tokyo (traditional japanese wedding and family only). 2 was at a restaurant where we had 70 guests and food/alcohol (typical celebration). If i remember the total for both was about 700man ballpark.
Save the money.
Both buy some nice clothes, do a 貸切 at a small restaurant.
Have a best man do CM that speaks both languages.
Then just register at the city hall.
With the saved money travel somewhere nice.
The Japanese side might want to have a photoshoot with traditional clothing.
Do this on a different day.
For entertainment at our wedding, we made a PPT with Graphics and did like a group quiz with other sort of games and questions included…and the winning group each got a bottle of pricey wine. My wife’s friends said that was fun as it’s not common at japanese weddings (is what they said).
Yeah, for a smaller wedding, some people rent a nice house with a garden for a day or two, making sure it has enough chairs. Then comes ordinary catering/cake without the wedding markup and a dial-a-priest to top it all off.
My wife wanted to save even more, so we just went to the ward office and paid for a really nice dinner with friends and family afterward, with my wife and I doing a little ceremony. So, the cost was about 150,000 plus about the same for our wedding bands. Of course, for something like that, we made it clear to not bring money or gifts.
You checked The Sodoh didn’t you. Very expensive. Fortunately I didn’t have to pay for it.
We had a yakatabune party. It’s 10,000 yen p,p, for 3 hours of cruising around Odaiba, eating sashimi and drinking.
The best man did the speech.
Took the train to the city office, waited 2 hours for the paperwork to be processed, had lunch with the in-laws at their house, returned home by train, and had
dinner at a burger joint. Neither of us could have hoped for a more perfect wedding day. Honestly, what’s the point in stressing over ceremonies and guest lists? All of that is for other people, while your wedding day should be about you two. My best advise is to just save your money and sanity for your marriage.
Weddings are a huge scam in Japan. It’s all about appearances. Save the money, spend it on booking a nice restaurant for your friends, book a photographer and take wedding photos another day. Save the rest or spend it on a honey. That’s what I did. Couldn’t have been happier.
Traditionally, weddings are really expensive here, I’ve heard stories about friends of friends who paid like 4 to 5 million yen for the whole thing. Guests usually contribute to this (i.e. they are charged for attending, at least 30.000JPY per person is normal), but you probably still end up in the red. I’d recommend to avoid all of the “chapels/wedding parlor” and other wedding-related places, just go to a nice restaurant and maybe take a picture at a foto studio after.
You could have quite a honeymoon with that sort of money. Wedding venues are extortionate. Like other people have suggested, just rent out a small restaurant.
For 20 people that sounds very expensive. Even if everyone brings the usual 30,000 yen it will only cover one third of the cost.
I got married back in 2006 at an expensive hotel in Yokohama. The cost was 3 million yen but we had like 50 or more people that came. Each person paid 30,000 and some more which is customary in Japanese weddings so we were left with about 800,000 yen left over if I remember correctly.
I recommend you to “Shinto Style Wedding” or “Church”.
It will be around 15 万 and you can do a 貸切 at a small restaurant or cafe for party.
In Japan, if you do wedding at hotel, wedding dress price will be aroung 50万, and many bride change her dress at least once so total is 100万, moreover, it is just rental price 🤣
Congratulations!!
I’m also planning a wedding too! Ours is also pretty small, about 50 people. Honestly, my advice is plan it somewhere that is personal to you and your partner, like a restaurant the two of you go to a lot or maybe in a close friend’s garden (which is what we’re doing). You can ask a friend or a parent to be an MC for you, dress up if you would like to, and make it as big or as small a celebration as you’d like.
If people do do favours for you, however, don’t let them do it for free— it’s still polite to offer them payment but just based on the discussions we have had with the people involved in our day, it’ll be much more in the ballpark of 100,000-300,000yen as opposed to the millions that Japanese wedding companies charge.
Fantastic! My wife put on this beautiful dress her mother owned which was a really cool vintage 60s dress and we went down to kuyakusho and got married and then had a nice dinner with her parents.
There was a French restaurant that we went to a couple of times that was only open for dinners on the weekends. So I spoke with the manager and asked if they would be interested in opening at lunchtime for a party. Capacity was 35 people. So we did an afternoon party from 13:00 to 16:00 and we paid up front I think 350,000 JPY. We printed up a menu with a few choices. Alcohol was included and there was plenty of it.
You might know that people give substantial money gifts here for weddings. We didn’t want that, so we did like a party entry fee. I believe that’s common when you do a secondary party after a wedding (nijikai).
Happy planning!
Does your wife read Zekushi magazine?
If yes, expect to pay a lot.
Mine wasn’t in Kyoto (and given the popularity of Kyoto, that alone may be inflating the price), but my husband and myself just found a small shrine that specialized specifically in weddings and had a small wedding package. We spend around 270,000 on our wedding, that was including renting the kimono for himself and myself, and a small reception at an attached restaurant the shrine had, and a small cake.
Unfortunately I can’t help you with suggestions for entertainment, because of the pandemic only his family was able to come so everything was in Japanese. We hired a bartender that did juggling and tricks, and a small fire show of juggling and tricks, for a little extra (not through the shrine). And we had some photos taken, although looking at them now I would have honestly had a professional photoshoot for more because the wedding day photos were just the generic one with all the family, and one with me and him in front of the shrine, and that was it. And the photographer wasn’t that great.
Others here are suggesting just rent the clothes and spend the money on a reception at a nice restaurant for everyone, and if you can’t fine a shrine that has a cheap wedding package, that’s honestly a great idea. I live in a smaller area, so the prices were lower than what you would find in Kyoto for sure.
Mine cost around 400万円 for 65 people, during the dinner party my wife wanted to change into a color dress and a kimono + we chose the most expensive food option which is why it was so expensive. I think we got around 180万円 in cash from guests and the rest i paid off from my savings.
I got quoted the same amount and was immediately thinking nope. In the end, we had a photo wedding in a church and went out for a nice meal with the wife’s family afterwards. Spent like 300,000 yen and split it with her parents. No regrets at all.
I got married in Tokyo, at the chapel/restaurant run by Iron Chef Sakai. It was extremely small (only 10 people: us and 8 guests). It cost about 500,000 and that included everything: dress/tux rental, Iron Chef meal for 10, chapel and staff/priest, flowers, etc.
Edit: This was 15 years ago, so prices may have changed.
Whatever you do, *don’t call it a wedding*. Rent out a restaurant “for a party”, not “a wedding”. Hire a photographer for a few hours. Don’t mention it’s a wedding. Once you say the W word, everything doubles in price.
I got sucked into an expensive one and a lot of my wife’s friends were young (like her, a couple years out of college) so the money they gave was often the minimum of ¥20,000. Her father and relatives gave a lot more, of course. But wow, it was a lot of cash. We had a venue that was western-style Taisho-era house with a decent sized grass lawn, which is where we did the ceremony. We did it in early November, and fantastic weather, too. It was low-key and since we didn’t use a chapel, it felt more natural and comfortable for me. Some of my family came from the US. Of course, we had to wait a year to afford the honeymoon and by that time my wife was pregnant. This meant a lot of interesting looks when we explained to people that we were on our honeymoon and they would look at her stomach, thinking oh…one of “those” weddings. Worst part for her was that she couldn’t drink. All said and done, I don’t regret it but I do advise people to really think carefully how they’d like to do it. I really understand why couples got married overseas. Of course, with the weak yen, that doesn’t make sense now. Take your time, plan carefully and don’t get sucked in by the vampire wedding planners. If you do something simple, know that you’ll have lots of cash for your home or a honeymoon.