Get me to the temple on time

My friend who lives across the road from me got married at the end of November, and he invited me to come! It was a fantastic opportunity to see what a traditional Japanese wedding is like, and I was so lucky to see it all. The traditional Japanese ceremony was held in beautiful Buddhist temple in Nanyo. I was planning on watching what happened at the ceremony from the outside, seen as the service is usually just attended by family and relatives, but one of my friends was on hand to style and dress the bride, and let me into the wedding to get a better view! I felt really uncomfortable intruding into such a solemn and intimate service, but my friend only seemed to think I was really lucky and was happy that I got to see the service so well.

It was a calm and quiet service. A bit of chanting by monks and drinking of special wedding sake to celebrate the union of the bride and groom. The thing that captivated me most was the dance in the middle of the service. A group of about four monks played traditional Japanese instruments that resulted in a kind of droning atonal chant-like music while one of the priestess entered the hall with a leaf. She performed a calm and flowing dance accompanied by the traditional avant-garde-sounding music which combined with the location was a very powerful and moving thing to watch and experience. Afterwards I managed to take some photos of the amazing traditional Japanese costumes worn during the ceremony.

After the ceremony the next big event was the reception, attended by extended family, friends and work colleagues. The experience was amazing. From the moving and sophisticated experience of the traditional wedding ceremony, the reception was something that could have rivaled the cheesiness of a Walt Disney theme park, had it perhaps only had some fireworks to round it off!

It was a lovely reception, but used loud speakers blasting out cheesy power-ballad style music while the bride and groom processed around the room. There was a Candle service (during which when the last big candle was lit Whitney Houston's (AND IIIIIII WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU came blasting out), the groom's students from the elementary school he teaches at came along to sing, they even asked me to play the piano for them (which I happily obliged to do!) It was probably one of the most Japanese experiences I'd ever been involved with - infact, I ruined how Japanese it potentially could have been with my foreign-ness invading the event!