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Getting married in Japan?

laurilovesyou

April 2007!
6 Nov 2006
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My finance and i are going to Japan next april for a month. We are both american but we would really like to get married while we are there. From what ive read it seems that you fill out papers at town hall and then are offically married. But we really wanted to have our ceremony there. Essentially we are looking for the equivialant to a justice of the peace ceremony, something small and private with just the two of us. We will be staying in Asakusa, tokyo. Any Advice?🙂
 
I am not very familiar with Japanese wedding practices but you could always go for a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony which is usually pretty private and idyllic. Brides wear traditional white kimono while grooms wear darker colors (these could probably be rented, not sure) and the ceremony is held at a Shinto shrine complete with flutists and the sharing of sake (should you choose to go that route). At any rate, i'm sure you and your fiance' will have a very memorable experience on whatever you decide. Enjoy your trip.
 
My finance and i are going to Japan next april for a month. We are both american but we would really like to get married while we are there. From what ive read it seems that you fill out papers at town hall and then are offically married. But we really wanted to have our ceremony there. Essentially we are looking for the equivialant to a justice of the peace ceremony, something small and private with just the two of us. We will be staying in Asakusa, tokyo. Any Advice?🙂

You can have a ceremony here with or without the civic rigamarole of filling out the papers at town hall, a process which would be meaningless for you and an irritation for the civil servants who have to process it.

You can easily hire a cheesy wedding "chapel", complete with a fake foreign "minister" to hold a ceremony for you, even if you don't have a Japanese marriage certificate. A good plan if you want to make the same mockery out of Christianity and the wedding ceremony that Japanese do.

There is no such thing as a Justice of the Peace wedding here. No concept of it and no equivalent either.

If you are people of faith, you might try to find a Tokyo church of your particular faith and contact them about holding a very simple ceremony for you. Something like that could probably very easily be arranged.

I would recommend doing the civil portion of this in the U.S. The reason is that later on in married life when things come up that you need to show proof of marriage, your registration and documentation are halfway around the world in a country whose language you don't speak (assuming that bit).

I originally married at a Tokyo ward office, like you're proposing, and within a very short time back in the U.S. I had need to submit proof of marriage to the U.S. government. I didn't trust them with my one-and-only certificate from Japan, which would have been difficult to replace. So I grabbed my wife by the hand and said, "Come on, we're going to the courthouse to get married." I turned in the (sentimentally) meaningless and easily replacable certificate as the proof that I needed.

Several months later, I dropped by the govt office and asked what had become of my marriage certificate. "Oh, did you want that back? Here." So saying, he opened a two-ring binder, snapped open the rings, and removed our now-punched certificate.

Point is, for practical reasons you may find yourself ending up doing a courthouse marriage at home afterwards anyway.
 
Not to mention that I'm not sure if two foreigners CAN get married in Japan without a permanant address or koseki, you would probably be told to go to the Embassy and do it there. You do need to get paperwork from the Embassy anyway in the form of proof that you are not married already (to other people) and have that paperwork winessed.
 
350 yen? Wow, and I've heard that weddings can cost tens of thousands of dollars - I'm going to Sapporo to have mine done :)
 
350 yen? Wow, and I've heard that weddings can cost tens of thousands of dollars - I'm going to Sapporo to have mine done :)

Getting married costs a few thousand yen in application fees at city hall. A basic wedding ceremony at a dedicated Japanese 'wedding plaza' is going to cost a few million yen.

Shall I bore the masses once more be pointing out that you don't even have to be present to get married. Well, one person must be there to hand over the paperwork, but those papers can be completed at home, witnessed by a couple of friends (gaijin can serve as a witness) and then submitted, with the application fee, at city hall. About twenty minutes later the couple are married - officially. It's no less complicated than applying for a passport (for Japanese nationals).

The day my wife and I got married (ten years ago next St. John's Day) I was relaxing at home, eating my lunch and reading the DY. My fiancee left to go to city hall with the documents. About ten minutes later my mental processes finally engaged when I realized that there were no more stages to the application process and that today was THE day. I jumped on my motorbike, shot off to city hall and arrived just in time to actually pay the fee - the very least a man can do...

Thirty minutes later I was teaching classes.

I think we had pizza for dinner.

I routinely straw-poll my married adult students about the details of their actually wedding day. Most plead ignorance - which leads me to think they were not in fact present when the documents were submitted.


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Getting married costs a few thousand yen in application fees at city hall. A basic wedding ceremony at a dedicated Japanese 'wedding plaza' is going to cost a few million yen.

There's one around here in Kiryu that offers a very simple "just the two of us, thanks" sort of ceremony for about 50,000 yen, I think.
 
I concur with most replies here, unless your going to make Japan some sort of home, I would just do the legal side back home and have whatever ceremony you want in Japan if thats your wish.

Marrying in a country you have no ties to whatsoever by either partner is just asking for uneeded hassle.
 
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