Weddings are expensive

21 comments

1. If the dress was made in Japan with japanese materials the yen exchange rate won’t matter much no ?

   Different story if it’s imported

2. ” the yen is much weaker to the USD, so this is just a double whammy to Japanese residences.”

   Do you think the price of things in Japanese shops go up or down with the dollar?

3. My wife bought a hand made dress from Etsy. It worked out to be cheaper than renting lol.

4. I would say the shop you’re looking at is on the expensive side. Between 20k and 30k seems standard and of course you can find cheaper options. A lot of wedding venues also include dress rental in their standard “package” so that’s something else to consider if you’re planning to get married at a venue, which a lot of people do.

   But yeah, it a expensive. But on the flip side, it’s custom to give cash gifts at weddings, which offsets the costs. Better than getting fine china a smart toaster you never really needed in the first place.

5. If you book a wedding they calculate how much it will cost you based on the number of guests. Unless you choose the expensive option for everything it is expected that the money by your guests will pay for almost everything.
   Personally we opted out of renting a dress, we only rented kimonos for the Shrine ceremony and then we switched to party outfits we had bought ourselves that had only cost us a fraction of the dress rental fee.
   You have to figure out what is important to you and then don’t budge bc the wedding venue will try to upsell you on everything.

6. Weddings are expensive pretty much everywhere, is the reason why me and my girlfriend put a hold on ours.

7. We had both a wedding in Japan and a reception with a wedding official in the US. Compared to the US we found it about the same. Sure the dress rental is expensive but everything evened out in the end. One of the big positives for me is that the planning bit is so streamlined in Japan. Pick the venue and date, visit 2 or 3 times to sort things out and done. Compared to weekend after weekend of sample meals, photographers, DJ. Etc…

8. I thought, all things considered, weddings here are pretty inexpensive. The dress is the only exception. BUT that really depends on the venue I think.

   We had our wedding at the hotel New Otani and we spent around 1million yen for 40 pax. Included a car service to and from the church, all you can eat food and drink for two hours, a free night in the bridal suite, hair and make up for the bride and 12 female guests, a wedding coordinator and a day of assistant, cake for 40 pax, a waiting room for our guests that opened one hour before the reception, etc. it was also super convenient because the airport limousine has this hotel as one of the stops so our elderly guests found it super convenient to fly in from Haneda.

   Meanwhile, we looked at a wedding “venue” in Harajuku. And that venue, for the same number of people but without the perks of a hotel, quoted us ¥3 million. No thank you.

   The dresses are hella expensive. A friend of mine back home made mine. And while I had to pay, the price was no where near the 300k they wanted for a rental here.

9. >Let alone, the yen is much weaker to the USD, so this is just a double whammy to Japanese residences.

   Please explain.

   If you’re in Japan, earning yen and you were never going to buy a US made/sold dress, what does it matter? It costs what it costs.

   If you’re importing a dress…then you’re importing a dress. That’s different to renting and importing anything has associated costs.

   What does ‘the dress’ actually entail. Is it rental of the dress itself or all the rigmarole that goes with ‘dressing’ on the day?

10. It sounds overpriced to me but it could depend on how you’re organizing things and what kinds of places you’re looking at, but that is quite expensive.

    I got married in 2015 and I think we paid a little more than 400,000 yen for the entire thing for 50 guests. It would have been more like 1 million but we were in Sapporo so instead of us paying up front and then the guests all giving us like 30,000 yen or whatever we didn’t get any money directly but each guest paid like 16,000 for their own food (different customs in Hokkaido apparently). That 400k included everything else from dress and tuxedo rentals, to the ceremony organization and cost, to the small gifts everyone got.

    Now, there are a few things in there worth noting as caveats. Sapporo is apparently a buyers market because of the number of hotels vs the number of marriages. We skimped on a bunch of stuff (specifically I remember flowers and the cake). And as someone else mentioned, our package included dress rentals so I assume we were getting a lower rate because of how things were organized.

11. Not only USD. Now JPY is weak comparing to many currency and making overall supply chain costs more. It is totally understandable that the wedding dress became more expensive regardless of the country of origin.
    Sure you can choose the cheap one if you can satisfy with the crappy design, or try to find a reasonable one if you have enough time to search and compare every shop available.

    Source: I just got married and paid more than 100K JPY just to rent a dress for a day.

12. You can legally get married by simply registering your marriage at your local city hall.

    It costs almost nothing.

13. Just get married at the courthouse and have a small party. Honestly it’s what I’m gonna do. Save all that money you would spend on the wedding and go on a trip around the world for the honeymoon.

14. Just buy your dress from tao bao lol. My wife did this recently and no one would’ve guessed her dress cost $90. We bought three dresses so she could decide on the day. Wedding dress makers are just running a scam.

15. The money we spent would have made a nice deposit on a house or bought a new car. It still pisses me off to this day.

    It’s a for profit Industry, trying to get as much money as possible. They dont care about tradition. Example, bad luck to see bride in dress before she walks down the aisle? Doesn’t matter. Take wedding pics now. First time I saw her in the dress was in a hallway in front of the photographers room.

    Want to eat the delicious food you paid for? Fuck you. Time to get changed ready for the next thing. Want to spend time with guests? Nope, get the fuck out. Next couple are waiting for their special day.

    Never again.

16. Wife bought her dress from AliExpress, I had to do a ton of measurements but it was worth it. Dress was huge and exactly what he wanted and fit was very good. Cost was like 70k JPY 🙂

17. Well it depends where in America. Prices vary from state to county. If you’re in places like californa where they price you below poverty then you can forget it, but if you live in a non gentrified Hispanic neighborhood you can get a cheap dress.

18. My wife and I spent a year saving for a wedding ceremony. When we started getting price estimates we decided to just book a nice location wedding photoshoot and use the money we saved (over 700,000¥) to travel. We both don’t come from wealthy families so we’re very mindful of how we spend our money.

19. wedding dress rental in Japan is insanely overpriced for what they provide

    best to buy overseas but then you’d need to sell them afterwards … unless you have a room dedicate to store them

20. We rented a dress for 400,000 yen. Her first choice was 600,000 yen and we decided it wasn’t worth the extra money. She wore it for a total of around 4-5 hours.

    Renting a tux for the guy on the other hand, was around 100,000 yen. They know weddings are the special day for the bride more than the groom and more money will be spent on making her look beautiful, so it’s basically taking advantage of the situation. In my home country we could have bought the dress for less than we paid rental here. Total cost of the wedding was around 4m yen, for what amounted to a 1 hour ceremony and food/speeches after. Total rip off.

21. Same as everything that has a cultural expectation here; they have an absurd markup because people will pay anything just to conform, and people will pay anything not to take the risk of doing it themselves and making a mistake.

    Pay the money or think for yourself.

    Most people in Japan choose the former.