UK couple getting married in Japan

Hi, my boyfriend and I are looking to get married in Japan over the next year or so and wondered if anyone has used any sort of company for booking their wedding or booked one themselves?

Any advice / comments welcome.

www.kyoto-weddings.com helped us do ours at Himeji Castle where they filmed Last Samurai. It was great!

Contact kyoto weddings who got back in touch but im just not overly sure that we wanted to get married in kyoto - would prefer tokyo. contacted 'my tokyo guide' who emailed me back saying that they could arrange everything and would expect the ceremony to cost around 110,000 yen. has anyone used them?? Review / comments??

That sounds too cheap. Also, Kyoto weddings can arrange anywhere in Japan. We chose Himeji because of the history and movies filmed there. A wedding in Japan isn't cheap and most are 800,000 yen to 3 million yen.

Our wedding planner said the average wedding in Japan was 80-100 guests at a cost of about 35,000 yen/guest. How much you spend though is mostly dependent on whether you have a reception and how many guests will come.

If you're talking just the ceremony then from 100,000 yen is about right. When we were shopping around that seemed to be around what most of the shrines charged for the basic shinto ceremony including the priest, musicians and miko. Its actually one of the cheapest parts of the wedding. Make sure you know what is included in that price though as I suspect it only covers the ceremony, and doesn't include kimono rental. That alone will probably double the price, and having a reception will really inflate the cost.

What exactly do you plan to do? Just the ceremony in front of close family, or the whole affair? Do you plan on doing the legal stuff here or in the UK?

Well we are just hoping to have the ceremony as it will only be and my partner in attendance. Hope to do all the legal stuff here in the UK beforehand too.

If you want a really memorable experience how about the Meiji Jingu? It's no-where near as expensive as you might think. If you just have a ceremony it's around 100,000 - though you'll probably end up paying at least double that when you factor in Kimono hire.

Most people who get married there have ceremonies in the nearby Meiji Kinenkan - but there is a building actually inside the shrine near the Harajuku gate that hosts receptions too. If you want to marry on a weekend or holiday you need to book about six months ahead - but for weekdays it should be no problem.

There's some information about weddings at the jingu at http://www.unmissabletokyo.com/meiji-jingu.html

I can't think of any other country that would let you get married in their emperor's royal shrine - so why not give it a go?

As for the legal side, it's very easy in Japan - you arrange with the embassy to give notice of your wedding, and then you just take the document they give you to your local ward office and fill in some forms. It's even free!

I agree with yllwsmrf that you should check what is included - if you just want the ceremony, that price sounds about right, and it MIGHT include simple kimono rental, or it might not. You could do the ceremony in simple, formal western suits as well.

Also, if you want to do the legal stuff in the UK beforehand, be sure that the planner does not include the legal stuff in Japan - in Japan reporting the marriage to the city hall constitutes the
marriage, and sometimes even for visitors, this seems to be possible (you use the hotel address as your temporary address). You can't ge married "legally" twice in two different countries :)