ceremony - KIMOKAME

Wedding Season has come

May 6th, 2012 0 Comments

Spring has come, and so has the wedding season in Japan.

We have two styles of wedding, one is traditional one and the other is western-style wedding.

Western-style is a Christian-style wedding ceremony and is currently very popular in Japan. The ceremony is modeled on a traditional or stereotypical chapel wedding. With the two types of ceremonies, traditional and Western, available it was bound for the two to be combined into what is called a contemporary Japanese wedding.

Most of them are held at hotels or ceremony halls where chapels and shrines are conveniently located within the facilities. Happon-en, Chinzanso, and Meguro Gajoen are the popular ceremony halls in Tokyo. They all have beautiful Japanese garden and many tourists as well as Tokyo people come here to walk around the garden. They have a good chance to see the Japanese wedding.

Traditional wedding ceremonies are Shinto-style and are held at shrines. When traditional one is chosen, the wedding fashion will also be Kimono dress fashion. Brides wear traditional white kimono called shiromuku, and grooms wear montsuki (black formal kimono), haori (kimono jacket), and hakama (kimono pants).

Contemporary Japanese weddings are celebrated in many ways. On the beginning of the wedding day, the participants are to get ready at the parlor’s beauty shop. The responsibility of the beauty shop is to dress the bride, the groom, and the other participants in the formal Japanese attire. Dressing the bride is an important task because the bride is to change into several outfits throughout her wedding day. Due to the complexity of the design, dressing a bride can be difficult and time consuming and for this reason the bride must be the first person to arrive two hours prior to the wedding ceremony. The bride’s attire consists of an extravagant kimono, heavy make-up, a wig, and a head covering.

Average number of guests in Japan is 70 to 80 people and definitely this is the day for the bride no matter how much time required for dressing and makeup.

How much do they spend for the wedding ceremony ? Average budget for the wedding ceremony is $30,000 to $40,000 USD. Is it expensive or cheap? If they are happily ever after, then it is not cheap at all.

If you are interested in Kimono for wedding, this is the one and you can find it in our products.

Coming of Age

January 23rd, 2012

In your country, how do you cerebrate for you to welcome into adulthood ?

In Japan, a person’s at age 20 is considered their welcome into adulthood. Since 1948, Coming-of-age ceremonies, known as seijin-siki are held on the second Monday of January. At the ceremony, all of the men and women participating are brought to a government building and listen to many speakers, similar to a graduation ceremony.

Turning age 20 has some legal effects. You can have the right to smoke, drink, and vote. As a matter fact, drinking and smoking age is technically at age 20, actual age I should not disclose it here. Big difference between age above 20 and below is when (and if) you commit crime (I hope this will never happen to you and myself), Juvenile law is not applicable from the birthday of age 20. Well I have never committed crime and I am not a lawyer, so I cannot tell about it in details.

But I can tell you about the fashion on the day of coming of age. Women often wear furisode, a traditional Japanese formal kimono with long sleeves. At the end of ceremony, many of them go to shrine to pray for their transition from childhood to adulthood successfully.

In the day of Coming age, when I go out, I saw a lots of young girls who were wearing Furisode. When they are wearing those. they all look so pretty !!

They look like ‘Yamato-Nadeshiko (大和撫子）- an idealized Japanese woman’, but they live in the modern world same as like you ! When I tuned into 20, I was a collage student in the United States, so unfortunately, I did not have an experience of wearing Furisode and going to the ceremony. I really, really missed that !

At Sinjyuku