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Real Weddings & Elopements 7 min read

A Four Seasons Otemachi Wedding: A Journey Worth Making

The groom and bride stretch out their arms hand in hand across a fog-covered dance floor during their first dance at a Tokyo hotel wedding.

Nearly a decade before her wedding, the bride travelled through Tokyo with two of her oldest friends, one she’d known since elementary school and one since Grade 7. The cities we visit young tend to keep a version of us, and Tokyo kept that one. When she came back to marry, at a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding a few steps from the Imperial Palace, those same two friends came back with her, this time as her bridesmaids. A trip among friends had quietly become the reason for another.

They live in Canada, on the Pacific side, and they met by accident at a friend’s board games night. That friend went on to stand beside the groom as one of his two best men. He proposed in Vancouver in February, and the whole wedding came together in about eight months. Seventy-three people followed them to Tokyo, from Canada, Macau, London and beyond, and from the beginning the couple held on to one idea above the rest. The trip itself had to be worth it, for every person who made it: the city, the hotel, the food, the evening, Japan.

The bride laughs with her bridesmaids in white and pale blue robes on a hotel bed, a black and white frame from a Tokyo wedding morning.
Bridesmaids in pale blue robes hold up their phones and smile at something just out of frame on the morning of a Tokyo hotel wedding.
The groom in a silver brocade jacket laughs with his groomsmen in pale grey suits as they crowd around him before a Tokyo hotel wedding.
A groomsman straightens the groom's navy bow tie as he buttons his silver brocade dinner jacket, getting ready at Four Seasons Tokyo.

That’s the truest reason we know to marry far from home. When people give a celebration days instead of an evening, and cross oceans and a date line to do it, the wedding stops belonging only to the couple. Friends from one side of the world meet family from the other, and what everyone remembers is something they made together, one table and one conversation at a time. These two understood that before a single invitation went out. Their invitations were passports.

  • The lace wedding gown hangs above a hotel bed, its long train spread across the white covers, on the morning of a Four Seasons Tokyo wedding.
  • The bride and her bridesmaids in pale blue robes hide behind copies of a custom wedding newspaper on the morning of a Tokyo hotel wedding.
  • The bride and two bridesmaids laugh over the pages of a custom wedding newspaper in a hotel room at Four Seasons Tokyo.
  • A make-up artist holds a palette of brown eyeshadows as the bride looks down, her hair clipped back, getting ready for her Tokyo hotel wedding.
  • The bride keeps still while eyeshadow is brushed on from a small palette, her hair pinned in clips, on the morning of her Four Seasons Tokyo wedding.
  • A pearl and crystal bridal necklace, earrings and hair piece laid out on black, ready for the bride on a Tokyo wedding morning.
  • A white Galia Lahav hanger rests on the beaded, leaf-embroidered fabric of the wedding dress before a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding.
  • The groom smiles in his white shirt and navy bow tie by the window as he gets ready at Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi.
  • Two groomsmen help the groom into a silver brocade dinner jacket with navy lapels, everyone smiling, on a Tokyo wedding morning.
  • Groomsmen in pale grey suits button their jackets at a tall window while the groom sits on a daybed in his brocade jacket above Tokyo.
  • The groom sits in the foreground as his groomsmen fasten cuffs and jackets against the bright windows of a hotel room in Otemachi.
  • Five groomsmen dress in silhouette against a wide window, the room dark around them, before a Four Seasons Tokyo wedding.
  • The groom and his groomsmen stand shoulder to shoulder at the glass, looking out over the Tokyo skyline from a high hotel room.
  • The groom in a silver brocade dinner jacket with blue trim looks down beside a window curtain, half lit by soft daylight in Tokyo.
  • The bride in a white robe with pearl-dotted sheer sleeves stands by a lamp in her hotel room, getting ready for her Tokyo wedding.
  • A close detail of the bride's white robe, its sheer sleeves dotted with pearls, on the morning of a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding.
  • The bride in her pearl-sleeved robe looks toward the window light, white ceramic discs on the wall behind her, at Four Seasons Tokyo.
  • The groom and his groomsmen walk toward the camera through the covered drive of a tower in Otemachi, painted arrows on the paving.
  • The groom in brocade and navy walks with five groomsmen in pale grey suits through the covered driveway at Four Seasons Otemachi.
  • A black and white frame of the groom and his groomsmen striding side by side through a covered city driveway in Otemachi, Tokyo.
  • The groom fastens his brocade jacket as his groomsmen walk with him beneath dark pillars outside a tower in Otemachi, Tokyo.
  • The groom laughs with his groomsmen in pale grey suits and buttonholes, a red brick building behind them in Otemachi, Tokyo.
  • The groom and his groomsmen walk past shelves of backlit bottles in a dark hotel bar on the morning of a Four Seasons Tokyo wedding.
  • The groom in his brocade jacket leads his groomsmen through a hotel bar lined with amber bottles before a Tokyo hotel wedding.
  • The groom in brocade and a navy bow tie smiles beside a groomsman, the warm bottle shelves of the bar soft behind them in Otemachi.

Otemachi, the Town Before the Gate

Otemachi takes its name from Ōtemon, the main gate of Edo Castle. Japanese dictionaries agree on the origin: this was the ground in front of that gate, and through the Edo period the great residences of feudal lords lined it. The castle grounds are now the Imperial Palace, and the lords’ houses have given way to the towers of Tokyo’s financial district, but the district still sits where it always has, at the threshold.

Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi opened in 2020 across the top six floors of a 39-storey tower. Its designer, Jean-Michel Gathy, brings guests up to a reception lobby on the 39th floor, behind a wall of glass with the city laid out beyond it. Then he does something unusual for a view like that. In front of the glass sits a rock installation on a shallow pond, set there, in his words, as a buffer because it “may be considered as discourteous to look straight down into the Imperial Palace.” The stones and water hold the foreground, so the eye travels out across the city instead of straight down. In the summer before this wedding, the Michelin Guide gave the hotel three Keys, its highest distinction.

The groom stands alone at a full-height window looking out over a wide green park and the Tokyo skyline from high in a tower in Otemachi.
The groom and his groomsmen stand in silhouette at a wall of glass, looking out over the Tokyo skyline from a hotel room in Otemachi.
The bride in a red qipao with gold embroidery and a long train looks out of a tall window over green parkland and the towers of Tokyo.
The bride in her red qipao, holding a round fan, is reflected in the glass of a corner window high above Tokyo at Four Seasons Otemachi.

It’s a building with manners. One of the great views over Tokyo, and the first thing the architecture does is quietly show you where not to look. We think about hospitality the same way. Most of it is care a guest never notices: the thought put in long before anyone arrives, so that what they meet feels easy. This wedding was full of that kind of thought, and the hotel was the right home for it.

When the couple were weighing up Tokyo’s hotels, they asked Dee where she’d go. Her answer was the Four Seasons at Otemachi, for the freedom it gives a couple to make a wedding their own and for the warmth of its wedding team. Knowing which venue will give a couple that room is half of planning a wedding in Japan. A destination wedding of this size has a great many moving parts: guests arriving from three continents, a tea ceremony and a Western one, an evening built like a festival, and a couple’s vision that has to survive all of it intact. That’s the work we know best. We were in it from the first cup of tea to the last song, holding the shape of the day while we photographed it.

Tea Before the Vows

Before the white dress there was red. The morning held a Chinese tea ceremony, the bride in a qipao embroidered in gold, the groom in a black Mandarin jacket. In a Chinese wedding, the couple serve tea to their elders, and the elders answer with their blessings. It’s a rite of gratitude, and it puts family first, before the guests and before the vows.

The bride in a red and gold qipao and a gold floral headpiece holds a round embroidered fan by a window, dressed for her Chinese tea ceremony.
A close portrait of the bride in a gold floral headpiece and red embroidered qipao on the morning of a Chinese tea ceremony wedding in Tokyo.
The groom in a black Mandarin collar jacket with gold embroidery stands at a backlit hotel bar lined with bottles at Four Seasons Tokyo.
The couple in Chinese wedding attire, her red qipao and his black Mandarin jacket, stand before a wall of round amber lights in Tokyo.
The bride in a red qipao with a long train stands alone in a dark lounge beneath a cluster of round amber wall lights in a Tokyo hotel.

There’s a quiet history in pouring Chinese tea in Tokyo. Japan’s own tea culture crossed the sea from China. Eisai, the monk who brought tea seeds home with him, wrote Japan’s oldest book on tea in the early 1200s, and much of what the country later made of a bowl of tea grew from what travellers carried back. Eight centuries on, a family carried their own tradition the same way, across an ocean, to honour it here.

Japanese tea gave the world a phrase for a morning like that: ichi-go ichi-e, one time, one meeting. Every gathering happens once. These people, this tea, this city, in this order, would never be gathered the same way again, and the couple gave that gathering its own unhurried place in the day.

  • The bride in a red qipao and long train holds a round fan by a tall window overlooking glass towers in Tokyo, dressed for her tea ceremony.
  • The groom in a black Mandarin collar jacket with gold embroidery folds his arms beside a lamp, dressed for a Chinese tea ceremony wedding.
  • The groom in black and gold Chinese wedding attire stands with arms folded, a lamp glowing in the foreground of a Tokyo hotel lounge.
  • The bride in her red qipao with a round fan stands before a wall of glowing round lights in a dark hotel lounge in Tokyo.

Vows in Front of Everyone Who Came

A hotel like this is built at the scale of a city, with crystal ceilings, long corridors and a grand ballroom. When we photograph a wedding of this size, we look for the opposite: two people, small and certain, inside all of it. That’s the truth of a big wedding. However grand the room, the reason everyone came is standing at the front.

The bride in a sheer lace gown, tiara and long veil, her reflection soft in the glass beside her, on the day of her Four Seasons Tokyo wedding.
The bride stands alone with her long train against a lit stone wall beneath a canopy of hanging crystals at Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi.
The groom reads his vows from a card into a microphone as the bride listens in her veil, backlit by a single spotlight at their Tokyo hotel wedding.
The groom lifts a hand to his eyes beside the bride in her veil, between tall white flower arrangements at a Tokyo hotel wedding ceremony.
The groom stands at the front of the ceremony beside the bride, framed by banks of white and blue hydrangea at Four Seasons Otemachi.
The groom and the bride face each other in near darkness, a spotlight glowing between them as the vows are read at Four Seasons Tokyo.

Their ceremony was held in white and pale blue, the colours they’d carried through the day, from the bridesmaids’ robes to the hydrangea. What a photograph can only hint at is who was sitting in those rows. Every guest had made the same decision to come. Each had crossed something to be there, an ocean, a date line, days away from their own lives, and the vows were spoken to the two of them in front of all of it.

Her vows held something no one in the room had heard before. Months before the wedding, the bride had a song written for her vows, and she kept it to herself, the groom most of all. It stayed a secret right up to the ceremony, to the point that the hotel asked us not to share the day’s running order with the couple. When it played, he was hearing it for the first time, surrounded by everyone who’d travelled to be there. Vows are usually words, promised once and lived for years. A song written for one moment can only be heard for the first time once, and she chose to give that once to him.

  • The bride's hand, an ornate silver ring across her fingers, rests against the soft white folds of her veil before the ceremony in Tokyo.
  • The groom leans in to the bride, her bouquet of white and blue flowers in hand, in a dark glass entrance edged with warm orange light.
  • The couple lean against a lit stone wall, her veil and train spread on the floor, under a glittering crystal ceiling at Four Seasons Tokyo.
  • A black and white frame of the groom in his brocade jacket at the front of the ceremony, guests in soft focus behind him in Tokyo.
  • The groom stands under a bright spotlight beside tall white flowers, the ceremony guests dark around him at a Tokyo hotel wedding.
  • A black and white close frame of the groom reading his vows into a microphone, the bride's veil in the foreground at their Tokyo wedding.
  • The groom looks down at his vows card as he speaks, the bride's veil falling soft in the foreground, white flowers at the edge in Tokyo.
  • The groom reads from a card while the bride listens with her head bowed, a spotlight burning between them at the Four Seasons Otemachi ceremony.
  • A black and white profile of the groom looking down at an open card of vows, a spotlight blooming behind him during the ceremony in Tokyo.
  • The groom reads his vows to the bride between arches of white and blue hydrangea, an abstract artwork on the wall behind them in Tokyo.

An Evening Worth the Flight

The couple built their reception the way you’d plan a trip for someone you love, with something to discover in every corner of the room. Chefs broke down a whole tuna by hand in front of the guests, the kind of skill Tokyo usually keeps out of sight, in its markets and behind its sushi counters, laid open for everyone to see. There was a claw machine straight out of a Tokyo arcade, casino tables, two photo booths, a violinist, a live band and a DJ, and an aerial performer turning above the tables. A telephone waited to record guests’ messages for the couple to hear later.

A reception place setting with a ribbon-tied menu, a mirrored name card and a pale wooden gift box at a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding.
A chef in a white cap and indigo jacket breaks down a whole tuna at a wedding reception in Tokyo, another chef working behind him.
Guests crowd around the counter as a chef carves a whole tuna in a tuna cutting show at a Four Seasons Tokyo wedding reception.
A violinist in a pale suit plays beneath a large layered chandelier in a dimly lit room during a Four Seasons Tokyo wedding.
An aerial hoop performer in red hangs upside down above the reception tables in a blue-lit ballroom at a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding.
The couple's first dance through low dry ice fog before white sculpted arches and flowers at their Four Seasons Otemachi wedding.
The groom and bride stretch out their arms hand in hand across a fog-covered dance floor during their first dance at a Tokyo hotel wedding.
Friends in pale suits lift the groom high into the air beside white flowers, the lit towers of Tokyo behind them at night.

At every seat sat a small wooden box with a guest’s name on it, and inside, a sake cup with the same name. It’s a small thing, and it’s the whole idea of the evening in one object. Each piece of the night answered the question they’d asked at the very beginning, whether the trip would be worth it, and answered it a little differently for each guest: a taste of Tokyo’s markets at the tuna counter, its arcades at the claw machine, and a cup with their own name on it to take home to Macau, or London, or the other side of the Pacific.

There was even a newspaper, The Wedding Post, printed for the occasion and thanking everyone who’d travelled near and far to be there. These are two people who think in things you can hold, and who wanted everyone they love to go home holding something.

The bride peers over the top of a custom wedding newspaper while her bridesmaids hold up their own copies around her in Tokyo.
Bridesmaids laugh and read a custom wedding newspaper with the bride, a playful detail on a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding morning.
  • Chefs in white caps lay out long knives beside a whole tuna on a wooden counter before the tuna cutting show at a Tokyo wedding.
  • A black and white frame of a violinist playing under a large layered chandelier at a wedding reception at Four Seasons Tokyo.
  • A violinist in a pale suit draws the bow beneath a glowing tiered chandelier during the evening of a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding.
  • The bride in a beaded champagne gown holds her bouquet as the groom in black leans beside her against a lit marble counter in Tokyo.
  • The bride lifts her skirt as the couple turn in their first dance through dry ice fog before white arches and flowers in Tokyo.
  • A black and white frame of the groom dipping the bride in their first dance, fog around them and white arches behind at Four Seasons Tokyo.
  • The groom raises the bride's hand to spin her on the dance floor before a white stage of arches, flowers and a tiered cake in Tokyo.
  • An aerial hoop performer holds the splits upside down above guests at their tables at a Four Seasons Otemachi wedding reception.

What You Carry Home

Part of what first drew them to us was a magazine feel: the editorial look of our guide to weddings in Japan, its cover most of all. It fits that after the wedding they spent more than a year with us making a hundred-page album. A celebration they’d designed like an edition, with passports for invitations and a newspaper of its own, now lives as a book they can open.

The couple in evening wear, her gown beaded in champagne, stand by a long dark marble counter under geometric lights in a Tokyo hotel.
The bride in a short beaded dress and the groom in a black tuxedo walk in front of a tall pleated curtain lit warm at its base.

A wedding worth travelling for gives everyone something to carry home. Theirs gave seventy-three people a sake cup, a passport, a newspaper and a few days of Tokyo they’ll talk about for years. For the bride and two of her oldest friends, it gave the city back to them, one more time, with a new ending.

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We're destination wedding planners and photographers specializing in creating unforgettable celebrations in Japan and beyond. With 25+ years of experience, we've perfected the art of bringing your vision to life.

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