In search for our perfect wedding ceremony venue in Japan

Time is limited!!!

When Carol was in Japan for the photo shooting, there was another mission.　In fact, there were two missions, but here, we will disclose only one. It is to search for the banquet hall for wedding ceremony in Japan. It is typical that the banquet halls get filled about 12~18 months in advance. Since our scope is next Apr~Jun, we had to start looking for the banquet halls. And in some cases, it was even too late as the slots were already taken.

□■About wedding market in Japan
Wedding market in Japan is quite interesting. Japan is known for a Buddhist (Shinto-ist) nation, but quite frankly (especially generation after WWII), the nation has become more atheist. On top of this, the nation's westernisation created an "idolisation" of the western practices. Wedding market in Japan has indeed been influenced by such "idolisation". Especially, the Christian style chapel wedding with white dress and veil walking on the red virgin road has become one of the "must-do" item for recent Japanese generations. I think Japan is the only nation which the citizen cares about Western wedding but does Buddhist funeral.

Wedding in Japan can be chosen from one of the three styles: Western style chapel wedding 　（教会式）, Japanese authentic Buddhist shrine wedding （神前式）, and Non-religious wedding （人前式）. Amongst all, the Chapel wedding is the most popular. Chapel wedding in Japan is done by a Protestant priest and thus, anyone can request to hold the ceremony in this style. However, the vow made is not as strict as the Christian vow, but it is a vow. In this way, choosing the wedding style in Japan is quite free.

What is interesting is that after the big wars in the mid 1940s, Japan has become a pacifist country. Since then, the generations who lived through the wars feel that a "happy wedding ceremony" is a big desire for their children. This raised an awareness and more importantly, the focus of the wedding ceremony venues to be service oriented. Furthermore, the way this "service oriented-ness" comes true is consideration to the minor details.

As "holding the happy wedding ceremony" is the main focus, there are lots of variety of entertainments which these wedding venues can provide. The ceremony can be formed into as much customization as possible, but at the same time, there are "packaged" ceremonies to avoid the couple putting much efforts in the ceremony. In most cases, most of the items which I found in HK ordered one by one, are included in the basic package, and all the couple needs to focus is the originality of the show, which is the entertainment. As much options are available, each will end up in quite a lump sum of total fee. However, the wedding market expects the parents of the couple to pay a portion, and the red packets called 祝儀袋 pay up quite a percentage of the fee, the venues don't consider their product "expensive".

□■About the information gathering for wedding ceremony.
In order to retrieve information about the wedding venue, there are various magazines which contain information of the wedding venue. Moreover, there are homepages which accompany the magazines, so that the readers can easily access the pages, register, and become a loyal subscriber of the information the publisher provides them. Smart idea...

Of such a market, an impressive one is called Zexy. Zexy had established about 10+ years ago, and now has become the biggest bridal magazine publisher. Just look at the size of their magazine.....

Mind you, this is only 1640 pages monthly magazine which is only 500 JPY (roughly around 40 HKD). It contains practically everything: from banquet venue information to dresses, rings, after party, photo and DVD shooting, to even manners and budget management tips. Quite a fully fledged information package which hardly anyone can catch up every month... (Just as an fyi, the supplementary site is http://zexy.net/).

Each venue has an open house events called "Bridal fairs". Of course, anyone can reserve a slot at any time to get an overall information from the venue if they cannot attend these fairs. What I found interesting is that it is typical in Japan that these "Bridal fairs" are scheduled by the venues, and the couples find what they want. We hardly ever have any expositions where these venues come at once (which seems to be popular in HK).

Bridal fairs take up quite some time. Typically, they ask us to spend roughly 3hrs. Our attendance involve the following items which take up the entire 3hrs...

1. Filling out survey for the venue to learn our care abouts, preferences, desires, concerns, and needs.
2. Checking out the venue in detail - from external appearance to even washrooms...
3. Get our concerns after looking through the venue, and get the quotation according to what we want to do.
4. Chit-chat.

It seems to be quite common (it could be because of the time of the year when we attended the bridal fair) that there is a "same day discount". I think this is to attract the customer to get their deals, but the discount may be over several 100,000JPY. This is quite significant... mmm...
All in all, the bridal fairs take up quite some time and barely can fit 3 fairs in one day (this will make our day schedule so tight that we cannot even have a decent lunch...).

□■Searching for our perfect wedding ceremony venue
As stated in the first line of this post, time is limited. We had soooo many options to consider, but we narrowed down to several and filled our our schedule while Carol was in Japan. Below are the venues we went. Looking at the list and recalling what we had accomplished, I want to give both of us the "Yokudekimashita" chop!!!

6th Apr:
センター南：パルティーレ横浜ウエディングビレッジ
日比谷公園：フェリーチェガーデン日比谷
有明：パルティーレ東京ベイウエディングビレッジ

9th Apr:
新横浜：アクアテラス迎賓館

12th Apr:
白金台：八芳園
青山：コルディアーレ青山

13th Apr:
横浜バスツアー(Cancelled)
横浜みなとみらい：ベイサイド迎賓館＆ベイサイドガーデンクラブ
横浜元町：山手迎賓館

And just to give you a sneak peek, here are some shots we allow to disclose for your "imagination" :P Only those who are invited and can come to Japan can see the real thing... Hope YOU will be there ;-)

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