I am Fujimori, the representative.
The weekend before Golden Week, we had a very nice, very unique, or perhaps unique is not the right adjective to describe this "unprecedented" (I don't know if "unprecedented" is the right word for a wedding... sorry) event. Sorry.) I am not sure if "unprecedented" is the right word for a wedding, but I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful wedding.
The two leading actors are a Japanese woman and a French man. The bride, Fujimori's junior in high school and former colleague, is a typical Asian beauty, while the groom is a typical Franco-beauty man with a small face and intellectual sexiness! They met before they graduated from college in the U.S. and had a long-distance relationship for seven years! They are a super couple who finally tied the knot after a long-distance relationship of 7 years!
About a month before the ceremony, we received an A4 booklet that was a kind of a mystery wedding tour, with a designated meeting place but a secret reception venue! When we arrived at the Hakone Open-Air Museum on the day of the wedding, we received another B5 booklet called "Bookmark for Attendance! The preparation was so amazing that I felt like I was on a school excursion with all the people I had missed.
The wedding ceremony was an open-air public ceremony in the outdoor gallery of the Open-Air Museum of Sculpture.
The ceremony was bilingual in Japanese and French.
During the exchange of rings, we were introduced by the officiant as the designers and makers of the rings, and we wove a congratulatory speech with stories about their wedding rings.
Incidentally, the wedding rings we made for the couple at our store look orthodox and simple, but on the inside of their rings, which are almost the same size, the three words they pledged at the ceremony are engraved so that they can be read when the two rings are stacked on top of each other.
After the ceremony was successfully completed, the venue was moved to the guest house in the museum for a champagne party with lunch.
The brand of champagne was selected by the couple after a tasting. The groom is from the Champagne region, and his relatives actually run a wine farm. So they brought a super magnum bottle (15 liters!!!) from France. ) that he brought with him from France!
Other delicacies included wines directly imported from France, foie gras and other delicacies, and a croquembouche (cream puff tree) used to cut the cake, making for a gastronomic exchange that left neither hand nor mouth at rest.
At the end of the party, the two exchanged letters to each other. The letters were read in three languages (Japanese, French, and English), and each group was excited in their own language (and somehow the excitement was a little different in each language), creating an emotional moment that I had never experienced before in a wedding greeting.
Finally, we went to the main onsen ryokan where the wedding party and tonight's accommodations were to be held.
A five-minute ride in a microbus brought us to a picturesque, well-established ryokan with cherry blossoms in full bloom on the grounds, about a month later than in Tokyo.
The room we were assigned had a private outdoor bath. The two Frenchmen who shared the room were very excited, wondering if they were going to be naked here, if there was no shower with a key, where they were going to sleep, drinking cherry blossom tea, it was just salt water, etc....
The two Frenchmen are, of course, experiencing hot springs for the first time. We immediately take them to the main bath.
A large white male who gets into the hot water for more than 20 minutes without a care, even though he is bright red and fussing about how hot it is. Is he sensitive or dull? I gave up first.
Soon it was time for the reception to begin. According to the booklet, the dress code is yukata. It is a party (banquet) at a so-called onsen inn's grand banquet hall.
The bride and groom entered the ceremony immediately. They both looked cool in their kimonos. Since all the guests were in yukata, the leading actors' kimonos looked great (in a sense, it was unfair).
A toast with Kagamibiraki, a large barrel of sake that is as big as a large bottle of champagne. Sake served in hinoki Masu (Japanese cypress) cups was a big hit with the French.
After that, the reception proceeded peacefully, and the groom's American friend made a professional-looking short movie and gave a short speech. I looked up to see a group of five stylish men in twisted potted hair. It was a surprise (!) festival taiko drum performance from the bride to the groom. They had been practicing for two months. They had been practicing for 2 months. The bridegroom was sobbing.
The reception, which lasted a full three hours, ended peacefully with a final letter to the parents (in three languages, of course).
It was an incomparable joy to see my dear friend celebrate such a happy occasion and to be able to move on with their new life together with the wedding rings I made.
Congratulations!
After the reception, I went back to my room and my French roommates went back to the bath. They thought there must be more sake in the keg, so they stormed back into the banquet hall, which was in the middle of cleaning up, and brought back a keg of sake to enjoy drinking. We drank until after midnight.
