Typical Japanese Marriage Process?

I'm aware legal marriage is filing papers with the ward office and that many couples choose to have a ceremony later -- my question is -- how much later? Same day? Few weeks? Months?

I'm submitting a fiction piece in which a JM/JF couple file papers and move in together, and have a wedding ceremony about a year later, but in the meantime introduce each other as husband and wife. How accurately does this reflect real Japanese practice?

Thanks

I don't know if it was typical, but in my case we had the Shinto cermony 6 months later.

@Hoshisato: Thank you. Did you live together in the time between filing papers and the Shinto ceremony, or is filing papers considered more of an engagement and both parties continue living separately until the ceremony concludes?

Thanks!

The filing is the marriage. A wedding is celebrating the couple being married. There are also ceremonies of blessing by priests(Shinto ceremony) if the couple wants. Engagement is the same as in other places. The couple decides they will marry and when they plan their life together they are engaged. When they file papers they are married. The ceremony can follow at any time. Some do it within days or weeks of papers filing and some 6 months later or even a year!
The ceremonies are not essential for a marriage. The filing papers is what makes a couple husband and wife. I heard though that in some places a couple can be husband and wife if they just live together. This is not the case in Japan. Engagement just means the couple decided to marry and call each other fiance's to each other.
Many young couples live together and break up and live with the next bf/gf. Engagement is more serious than just living together.
Hope this clears things up.

As a point of comparison, and while things in Japan are different, in France the ceremony at City hall is the only official marriage. It is a bit more involved than just signing papers and can only be performed by the mayor or an alderman representing the mayor, but it doesn't last very long, unless the bride and groom are well known people.

Most of the people that have also a church ceremony have it later on the same day. Especially in small towns were the city hall and the church are located on the same square.

However some couples, mostly wealthy ones, have the church ceremony in another town, for example the town or village where the family of the bride has a centuries old family home, so the ceremony will take place at least one week later.

Last year the son of a very important aristocrat was married in church 3 months after the civil marriage.

You are "expected" to, first, introduce your spouse-to-be to each other's parents to ask for approval, then start doing the arrangements such as booking ceremonial halls, banquettes, costumes, new home, honeymoon, sending invitations etc. as you do the engagement ceremony, and then several months later you have the wedding ceremony and banquette on the same day, and the legal registration is usually done a day before that or so, because the day after the ceremony is the day you depart for your honeymoon, and they you start living together for the first time. And then sooner or later you get pregnant, but it better be after the honeymoon.

If the procedure is not done in this order for no special reason, the couple may be frowned at somewhere by someone and therefore things may not go as smoothly as they should.

That said, I just read a newspaper article yesterday that about 40% of married couples today get pregnant before they get married. In those cases, typicall, you get unexpectedly pregnant, then you find a good way to confess this to each other's parents, then you get legally married ASAP, and then if you're not too busy with raising the baby, you have the wedding ceremony and honeymoon. But a lot of couples have the ceremony about a year later when the baby is easier to babysit.

I have the impression that a lot of couples who don't do the ceremony right after the legal registeration, sort of end up not doing the ceremony at all for the rest of their lives.

Either way, although the ceremony or honeymoon may come quite later due to circumstances, there is no reason for a couple to get legally married without introducing the partner to the parents, so if the legal marriage is done without the knowledge of the parents, they're going to have a hard time for decades.

My sister-in-law and her husband submitted their papers in June and had their ceremony in November, we submitted the papers in September and had the ceremony the next June- a large gap isn't that unusual here. Most of my friends though have had their ceremony within a week or so of submitting the documents, or as Uco said, not had a ceremony more than a year later and possibly won't have one at all.

None of my friends so far have had a dekichatta kekkon (and we didn't!) so I'm surprised to hear that the percentage is as high as 40%, although it does seem quite possible.