Wedding Customs

20 July 2022

The first wedding I remember attending was in 1973. My Auntie Ann married my Uncle Bobby (the same people I am visiting with in Maine this week), and I was asked, at age seven, to fulfill a very important role: to escort my Grandma Watson down the aisle at the start of the service. I looked fabulous in white pants, white shoes, and a navy shirt with big white polka dots.

That wedding was also the first time I remember hearing my father sing songs from start to finish. Before the bride arrived, he sang If We Only Have Love, and after communion, I think, he sang One Hand, One Heart from West Side Story, a song that still makes me cry (thank you, Lenny!).

There were more family weddings as I hit my teens, but the details fade. When I moved to Japan, however, they began to stand out, in contrast.

Although the only ceremony needed in Japan for newlyweds is to have their status recorded in the official family registry at city hall, Japanese weddings can be glorious affairs. The three that I attended while in Japan all took place in hotel ballrooms, lavishly decorated. All the guests dressed formally. I dusted off my black suit and went searching for my white silk tie every time.

Guests arrive and drop off gifts as they enter. Gifts were all the same: money. The closer you were to the bride and/or groom, the more money you were expected to give, but the formula was identical.

Go the bank, and ask for new, unwrinkled 10,000 yen notes. (They’re worth about USD70 nowadays, but back then the exchange rate was higher, about USD130.)

At a stationery store, select a wedding envelope. These were white, folded affairs, sometimes lined with red paper (white and red is a very lucky color combination in Japan), and wrapped with plaited cords of stiff red, gold, silver, or white. The front of each was marked with a celebratory greeting: 御祝い (oiwai, congratulations).

You carefully remove the cords without untying them, and within the envelope’s folds is a smaller envelope, precisely sized to fit the crisp bank notes. But before you insert the money, you must inscribe your name and address, together with the amount you are enclosing on the back of the envelope.

Insert the money, seal the smaller envelope (preferably placing your signature seal or chop, a 判子(hanko) at the seal), return the smaller envelope within the folds of the larger envelope, and then replace the cords.

An important note: at the store, there is a selection of envelopes for different occasions. The ones for funerals (the money you include for a funeral is called 御香典 (okōden, money for funerary incense) is also white but lined with black, for mourning. Do not confuse the two!

At some Japanese weddings, the bride and groom embark on an incredible series of costume changes over the course of the afternoon, aided by professional dressers behind the scenes. The order can vary but the first outfit will either be traditional Shintō attire, with the groom in black haori (a short jacket) and hakama (calling hakama “pants” would be a disservice to their stylishness), and the bride usually in an ornately brocaded red kimono (called an 色打掛 (irouchikake), her hair done up in antique tortoise-shell pins with a white band called a 角隠し(tsunokakushi, and although most people in Japan think that it is worn to conceal the bride’s “horns” of jealousy or rage (角 can mean horns), a 角隠し was originally pronounced sumikakushi. The sumi, written with the same character, 角, referred to a woman’s hairline, and in Edo Japan, women needed to conceal their hairlines when entering Buddhist temples, much in the same way that Catholic women used to wear hats and veils to church, pre-Vatican II—and my! wasn’t this a long parenthetical!), or the bride and groom will wear Western wedding outfits, a tuxedo and a wedding dress.

A third costume change can occur and usually involved designer clothing. Each time a change takes place, the ceremony’s MC will announce it and the bridge and groom will re-enter the ballroom to spotlights and applause.

Another aspect of these wedding events that took me by surprise was that each guest receives a large gift bag from the new couple. The included gifts will vary, but there is usually something commemorative, marked with the date of the event and the names of the bride and groom, and at least one, if not more, practical item. I’ve received dishes, hand towels (you can never have enough hand towels), and even a cooking pot.

Fast forward to last weekend.

My cousin Gabbie had a glorious wedding of her own in Saratoga Springs, and Hiro and I flew across the country to be there. Several of my McManus cousins were there and the gossip flew thick and fast. I live for that! The last Catholic wedding that Hiro and I attended together might have been my sister’s wedding, twenty-one years ago, and because one of my brothers decided to end the rehearsal dinner the night before with a big round of tequila shots, Hiro’s memory of that hot day in August is, excusably, thin.

The Catholic mass aspect of weddings hold little interest for him, although I knew he was smiling at the acrobatics of it all: sit, stand, sit, stand, kneel, sit, kneel, stand….

The fun began at the reception. We sat at a table with our siblings and nephew, and when we weren’t playing Pokémon GO with our nephew, Hiro had questions.

What are they doing now?

It’s the newlyweds’ first dance.

Who’s dancing now?

The bride and her father.

Do we have to dance?

We do not.

Now what’s going on?

The bridesmaids are singing a sorority song as the groom removes the bride’s garter.

The what?

The garter holds up one of her stockings. I’m sure you’ve seen men wearing garters in Japan.

Oh. I didn’t know women wore them too.

Most of the time they don’t. But at weddings, yes.

Why is he taking it off?

It’s traditional for the groom to throw the garter.

Throw it?

Yes. The unmarried men will line up to try and catch it. The one who does so will be the next one to get married.

Really?

That’s what they say. It’s the male version of the bouquet toss.

They toss a bouquet?

The bride tosses her wedding bouquet at the unmarried women, and whoever catches it will be the next to wed.

It’s a prophecy?

I don’t know how those traditions got started. But it’s more of a game now.

Huh.