Here a wedding, There a wedding.

結婚式はここ、結婚式はあそこ

 

We have had the great pleasure of attending a couple of wedding parties lately.  I say "we" because even though I didn't get to go to Tennessee for Lance and Tamra's wedding, I've worked extensively on the photo albums of the pictures Martin took, which will be our wedding gift, and I almost feel like I was there.  I really did attend the wedding party for our skater friend and his lovely bride here in Tokyo, as did his and her coworkers and many of our skater friends.  Pictured above are most of the skaters who attended.  Take a good look.  You won't often see this motley crew in formal wear.

  I can't really compare the two weddings because we didn't attend Irie-san's actual wedding, but I think it will be fun to look at some of the similarities and differences of the two parties.  It is customary that the Japanese couples have a party after the very formal and traditional wedding, to which they invite their many friends and coworkers.  This is called a nijikai, which means second party.

That being said, let's do a little comparison of wedding customs and traditions.  The Japanese wedding nijikai is set up at a restaurant banquet room, and friends are positioned at the entrance to check people in and take the admission fee.  This is different from the American wedding, where it is not customary to pay a fee, but it is normal to give a gift which can either be a useful item or money.  The nijikai could be compared to the reception, and it will generally last for two hours, whereas the American reception generally lasts several hours.

After people have assembled, the Japanese couple makes their grand entrance.  It was very interesting, with much bowing, they briefly bowed to everyone individually in greeting, so as they took tiny steps forward, they looked to each side and bowed and bowed and bowed on their way to the front of the banquet room.  After that there was a champaigne toast, which is not so different from the American version.  The restaurant served a delicious buffet, (as it was Lawry's, I must admit I went through the roast beef line twice), there was a game, and speeches, the one by the bride was very gracious. (I didn't understand most of it, but I recognized the formal language).  When they cut the cake, I didn't see him feed it to her, if he did, but when she fed it to him, it was with a surpising amount of intensity.  Look at the picture above, and notice her mischievous expression.  He, on his part, took it like a man, and ate it right up.  When the newly married couple had made their entrance earlier, he was wearing a red sash over his tux, and later, he presented this sash very formally to a male friend, while his bride presented her bouquet to a woman friend.  My guess is that these friends are an unmarried couple, and it is the Irie-san's wish that they be the next married couple. 

Of course, the American tradition is to toss the bouquet to all the unmarried women, and the one who catches it, will be the next to be married.  It's a very popular tradition, but the only thing that I don't like about it, is that children seem to always get involved.  Obviously, it's just for fun, but still, if you are a single girl, hopeful for marriage, and every time you get a chance to try to catch a bouquet, the clamoring little girls in front always grab it, what's the use?  If you have to wait for them to grow up and get married before you have a chance, you probably shouldn't believe in this tradition.

A related activity which is almost as popular, is having the groom toss the wife's garter to the unmarried men.  Actually it is even more interesting than that, as first, the groom "goes and gets" the bride's garter from under her dress, generally with his teeth.  This makes for some interesting photos, which took up a whole page in the album we're making for Lance and Tamra.  They did it in a very cute way, her sitting on a chair, with appropriately sultry music being played, and Lance ducked under her dress and kept coming out with surprising items, eventually the garter.  The funny part, and very common I think, is that all the single men assembled, but when the garter was tossed, it dropped to the floor twice and had to be retossed.  Studying the photos, you can understand why.  Only a couple of guys were actually trying to get it, most of the guys were holding their hands down, clasped, in front of them, watching, but trying not to accidently catch it..  But my friend, Laura's beau was really putting out the effort, and he was eventually successful.  I'm sure we'll hear more wedding bells in the future.

With the American wedding reception, there are several customs.  Of course there is usually drinking, good food, and generally two cakes, one a tall white elaborate one, and usually the couple feeds each other a piece of cake, sometimes carefully, sometimes a bit aggressively.  The second cake is called the grooms cake, and is usually a different flavor, maybe a fruit cake or something interesting.  The custom is for the bridal couple to take the top, smallest layer of the main wedding cake home and put it in their freezer to share on their first wedding anniversary.  I wonder how many people actually remember to take it out of the freezer and eat it together one year later.

Usually there is dancing, first with the wedding couple, then the bride dances with her father and the groom with his mother.  Then more dancing, and more dancing.  Usually there is a band or some other form of music.  You can tell by the pictures of Lance and Tamra's wedding that the band was good because the dancing was a big hit.  Well I know this for a fact, because I saw this band perform last summer in Nashville and they were quite entertaining.  Gee, I wish I could have gone to Tennessee for that wedding.  It really looked like fun.  The send-off to the bride and groom was a bit unique.  The guests all lined up outside with lit sparklers, and formed a path that the bridal couple followed to an extremely large and shiny white truck.  There was a ladder for the bride to climb into the truck, and she waved goodbye with tears of joy as they drove off to their honeymoon.

The send-off for our Japanese friends was similar, but maybe more traditional.  All the guests joined hands and formed a tunnel, under which the happy couple slowly walked through.  In the course of their procession, various friends put their arms down and momentarily trapped them.  It was all very festive, so very fun, and Martin got some good pictures.  Of course, he was not the only one with a camera, we're in Japan after all, everyone has a camera.  This is one well documented event.

  I thought you might be interested to see some of the others who brought their camera to the event.  On your left is a group of guests taking a good shot at the bride and groom, and here is my good friend, Naomi-chan with her camera.  She just might be the next to get married.  I've got my fingers crossed for you, Shigeshige.  One other custom of the Nijikai is to play a video which would be a collection of pictures of them as children, when they are dating, videos of their parents talking about them, and in this case, Irie-san's parents went around to all the important points in their town and filmed his elementary school, etc.  These are always interesting, especially if there are pictures of skaters included:)

After the wedding party, since our apartment is so close to the restaurant, we invited the skaters over for   a drink.  It was a Sunday night, and only about 9pm,   so several folks came.  As Martin and I have been working on the photo albums of his best friend's son's wedding, the finished one was right there,(which is composed of enlargements of the wedding itself and posed pictures afterwards like this one to your right) and the skaters took a look.  Well, that was really interesting.  Japanese friends are always asking me about how things are done in America, in comparison to how things are done in Japan.  And since we had all just been to a Japanese Wedding Second Party, it was especially appropriate.  Martin's pictures are quite good, and I hope our friends will like their albums.  This week, before his business trip to Hamamatsu, we finished the second album of smaller pictures of all wedding related events, yesterday I bought the materials needed, and tomorrow Martin will construct a shipping container and I will mail it.  That's proof that this couple, married ~22 yrs, can still work together to get something accomplished.

By the way, I should mention here that of the other three wedding parties I've attended since coming to Japan, all three couples were soon expecting a baby.  Here is my sweet friend, skater Kaorin-san.  My other good friend and fellow skater, Yumi-san, is also expecting.  The hubbies are very happy, and I wish everyone much happiness and good luck.  Campai!!

上の物語は長いですね。最近ブログのフォーマットを変わっているので、ポーストを久しぶりに書きました。このポーストは最近にマーティンはアメリカに一番の友達の息子さんの結婚式に参加して、たくさん写真を撮りました。それから、私は彼をアルバムを作る手伝いました。もっと最近、私たちは入江さんというスケータの二次会に参加しました。それはとても面白かったです。アメリカの結婚式の文化や習慣と日本のは対照しにくいだけど、それについて話しました。今度殆ど英語だけ書いたけど、次はたくさん日本語で書いてがんばります。