In Japan, a marriage begins with a sheet of paper handed in at a city or ward office. No priest, vow or ring is involved. Two adult witnesses sign the form, and that’s all the law asks of them.
That’s the most freeing fact in this guide. Everything couples cross the world for, the ceremony, the promises, the long dinner afterwards, carries no legal weight here at all. It’s there because two people chose it.
So how do you get married in Japan? Most international couples do it in two places. They marry legally at home, at a registry office, a courthouse or with their celebrant, then hold the wedding that matters to them here, where it can take almost any form in almost any place. Marrying legally in Japan is possible too. You file a marriage notification, the konin todoke, at a city or ward office, with proof that each of you is free to marry, Japanese translations of your documents and the signatures of two adult witnesses. If neither of you lives in Japan, the office’s review can take weeks or months, and not every office will take the filing.
This is the guide we’d hand you across the table at a first meeting, whether you’ve written to us with a date and a guest list or with a photograph of a shrine and three question marks. Each chapter gives the short answer, then points to the longer guide we’ve written on it, from the weddings we’ve planned, photographed and filmed.
The Short Version
Updated October 2026
- Sign at home, celebrate here. Most of our couples take this route, and the wedding is then free to be anything, almost anywhere.
- Decide who works for you before you decide where. A venue’s coordinator works for the venue. An independent planner works for you.
- Choose the season before the place. Blossom arrives from late March, autumn colour lasts into early December, winter is clearest on the Pacific side and June brings the rain.
- Choose a place for how it hosts you. A hall that holds several weddings on a Saturday and an inn given to you alone for two nights make two very different days.
- Ask before you assume. Much of Japan’s most beautiful ground belongs to someone, and permission can take weeks or months.
- Give it time. We take bookings up to 18 months out, and the planning itself fills the final year.
- Plan the days, not only the day. Guests who’ve crossed the world deserve more than an afternoon.
The Marriage and the Wedding
There’s the marriage, and there’s the wedding. In many countries they happen in the same room, at the same moment. In Japan the law keeps them apart, and that turns out to be more useful than it sounds.
Married at home, celebrated in Japan. Couples sign before they fly, sometimes days before and sometimes months, and arrive with the paperwork finished. Their time in Japan goes to the wedding and the days around it, and nothing about the ceremony waits on an office’s review. It’s what we’d suggest to almost everyone.
Married in Japan. It can be done, and for some couples it matters a great deal: the marriage begins in the country where they celebrate it. It asks for documents gathered at home, translations, time at an office and, if neither of you lives here, patience. The steps are in the next chapter.
Either way, the ceremony here is the same ceremony.
A ceremony doesn’t become more real for being registered in Japan, or less for being registered at home.
Our elopement guide covers how both routes work when it’s just the two of you.
How to Get Legally Married in Japan
Registering a marriage here takes more preparation than most couples expect, and less mystery than they fear. What you’ll need depends on both your nationalities and on the office where you file, so treat what follows as the shape of the process, and confirm the details with your embassy and that office before you book anything around them.
What’s changed lately
- 1 April 2022. Both partners must be 18 or over to marry in Japan.
- 1 April 2024. The waiting period that applied to women before remarrying ended.
- 1 September 2025. The US Embassy stopped notarising the Affidavit of Competency to Marry.
- 25 March 2026. Japan’s Supreme Court sent the cases on marriage for two men or two women to its Grand Bench. No hearing date has been set.
| Document | Where it comes from | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| The marriage notification (konin todoke) | The city or ward office where you’ll file | Signed by both of you and by two witnesses aged 18 or over |
| Proof that each of you is free to marry | Usually your embassy or your own government | Often called a certificate of legal capacity to marry. Where a country doesn’t issue one, offices may accept a sworn statement made before its consul instead |
| Your passports | You | The originals |
| A birth certificate | Your home country | Some offices ask for one |
| Japanese translations | Anyone, including one of you | One for every document that isn’t in Japanese, with the translator’s name on it |
- Ask your embassy first. What each country provides, and what offices here accept from it, changes. Since 1 September 2025 the US Embassy no longer notarises the Affidavit of Competency to Marry that American couples used to bring. It now offers a letter explaining that the United States doesn’t issue such a certificate, and some offices still ask for a sworn affidavit notarised in a US state instead, which several states can arrange remotely. Start with your embassy’s own page if you’re American, and with your own country’s equivalent if you’re not.
- Gather and translate. Your passports, the proof that you’re each free to marry, any other documents the office asks for, and a Japanese translation of each one that isn’t in Japanese.
- Find two witnesses. Any nationality, aged 18 or over, and an adult under their own country’s law too. They sign the form themselves. The law doesn’t ask them to be there when it’s handed in.
- Choose your office, and ask ahead. Not every office accepts a filing from a couple who are only visiting: some do, and others tie it to a registered address. Ask which documents it wants, whether it will check them before you file (many ask foreign nationals to), and how long its review takes. When both of you are foreign nationals living abroad, the office may consult the regional Legal Affairs Bureau first, and that’s what takes the time. Chuo Ward in Tokyo tells couples to expect about four months even in a simple case, and Kyoto’s Nakagyo Ward warns that a decision may not come during a short stay.
- File the konin todoke. Both of you must be 18 or over. Once the office accepts the notification, you’re married from the day you filed it.
- Ask for proof. The office can issue a certificate of acceptance, the juri shomeisho: ¥350 on standard paper, or ¥1,400 on a decorative one. When everything is in order, the standard certificate can often be issued the same day, while the decorative one can take a few weeks. It’s the document most countries ask to see.
- Do what your home country needs. Some countries recognise a marriage made in Japan with no further step. Others, including France, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, need it transcribed or reported at home, and the table below shows which. Either way, line up a translator at home before you fly, so the Japanese paperwork is ready for your own country’s records. If an authority at home asks for an apostille, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues one free of charge, usually within a few working days.
We’ve arranged legal marriages in Japan for couples from every country in this table, through each of their embassies. Some are straightforward, and some aren’t.
| If you’re from | Proof you’re free to marry | At home afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | A Certificate of No Impediment from the Australian Embassy, which offices here accept for three months from issue | Recognised; nothing to register |
| Canada | A marriage affidavit, sworn in person at the Canadian Embassy or a consulate (Government of Canada) | Recognised; nothing to register |
| France | A certificat de capacité à mariage from the French Embassy in Tokyo, applied for by post after ten days of banns; allow about six weeks if you live outside Japan | Transcribed onto the French register through the Embassy, for a French marriage certificate and livret de famille |
| Germany | An Ehefähigkeitszeugnis, the certificate of legal capacity to marry, from a register office in Germany, with an apostille and a Japanese translation (German Embassy, in Japanese) | Valid in Germany once Japan accepts it; adding it to the German marriage register is optional, through the Embassy or the Osaka consulate |
| Ireland | A Certificate of Freedom to Marry, applied for online through the Irish Embassy in Tokyo; a late fee applies within 28 days of the wedding | Recognised; not registered in Ireland (Citizens Information) |
| Italy | A nulla osta in Italian and Japanese from the Italian consular office in Japan, in person or by post (Consulate General in Osaka, in Italian) | Transcribed in Italy through the consulate, with the Japanese certificate apostilled; it doesn’t count there until it is |
| The Netherlands | A certificate of marital status, which stands in for a certificate of capacity to marry (NetherlandsWorldwide) | Recognised once the certificate is legalised; register it with your municipality if you live in the Netherlands |
| New Zealand | A Certificate of No Impediment with an apostille, from the Department of Internal Affairs in Wellington (New Zealand Embassy) | Recognised; nothing to register |
| The Philippines | A Certificate of Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage from the Philippine Embassy, issued only to Filipinos living in Japan; anyone else should ask the office what it accepts | Reported to the Philippine Embassy or Consulate General within one year |
| Singapore | A statutory declaration of marital status, made by appointment at the Singapore Embassy in Tokyo, with a marriage search result from Singapore’s Registry of Marriages issued within three months | Valid without registering; re-registering in Singapore is voluntary |
| South Korea | No certificate of capacity is issued. Korean nationals bring their basic certificate and certificate of marriage relations, with Japanese translations | Reported to the Korean Embassy or a consulate within three months |
| Taiwan | A single-status certificate from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, applied for in person with a household register transcript issued within three months | Registered in Taiwan, through the Representative Office or at a household registration office |
| The United Kingdom | A marital status affirmation or affidavit, applied for online and sworn by appointment at the British Embassy in Tokyo (GOV.UK) | Recognised; nothing to register |
| The United States | No certificate exists. The US Embassy offers a letter saying so, and some offices still ask for a sworn affidavit notarised in a US state | Recognised; nothing to register |
If you’re marrying legally here, keep at least three full days of your trip for it, clear of everything else. Even simple cases need the time, and some need more: the hardest we’ve done was for a Russian bride and a Mongolian groom with different relationship histories, and the Ministry of Justice took longer to check.
Handing in the form is the easy part. The review is what takes time, and it’s why we’d never let a wedding depend on it.
Who Works for You
In Japan the place often comes with its own planner. Hotels, wedding halls and the guest houses built purely for weddings each have a coordinator, often a very good one, whose job is to make that building’s wedding run well: its menu, its florist, its photographer, its timings.
Our own line on this is six years old now, from what we wrote in 2020 about choosing a planner in Japan, and we’d still put it the same way.
Venue wedding planners work for the venue, not for you. Freelance planners work for you.
An independent planner begins with you rather than a building: the part of the country that suits the wedding you’ve described, the place that will look after your people the way you would, the team that belongs there, and what happens when the plan meets the weather. That last part matters more in Japan than couples expect. When a road closes or a typhoon changes course, the call that fixes it happens in Japanese, and it should come from someone who already knows your wedding inside out.
Whoever you talk to, ask which places they’d suggest and why, who will speak to the venue and the shrine and in which language, what happens if it rains, and whether you can see a whole wedding they’ve planned rather than a highlight reel. Our wedding in Japan FAQ picks up where those leave off.
Elopement, Intimate Wedding or Wedding?
Before the place, the people. Nothing changes a wedding in Japan more than who’s coming: which places can hold it, how much has to be built, and how many days it needs.
We use three words, and we use them precisely. If nobody else is at the ceremony, it’s an elopement. If family or friends are there, up to around twenty of them, it’s an intimate wedding. Beyond that it’s a wedding, and thirty to fifty guests is an ordinary, full wedding here, one that needs as much planning as any other.
The difference matters more in Japan than in most places, because so many of its most beautiful places are small. Fifty guests need either a venue built for them or a place that can be made ready for them, with everything that implies. Our elopement guide covers the two of you, and our guide to planning a destination wedding weekend in Japan covers bringing everyone.
Choosing Your Ceremony
Because no ceremony in Japan makes anyone legally married, yours can be whatever it needs to be. The main choices:
A Shinto ceremony at a shrine. A religious rite in Japanese, performed by the shrine’s priests in the order the shrine sets. Many shrines welcome couples from overseas who understand what they’re taking part in. Our Shinto wedding guide covers what to expect, and how to choose between a shrine’s rite and the alternatives.
A Buddhist ceremony at a temple. Rarer and quieter than a shrine wedding, and moving when it means something to you. One couple married at Taiseki-ji, a temple at the foot of Mt Fuji, where a priest moved among the guests pouring sake into each red lacquer cup.
A ceremony of your own. In a garden, a ryokan, a forest or a field, led by a celebrant, a friend, someone from your family or the two of you, in whichever languages your families speak. Couples bring their own traditions, and a good venue makes room for them: the Greek stefana, a pair of crowns tied with ribbon and held above the couple by the groom’s oldest friend at a ryokan wedding at Jinya; tea served to each set of parents on the Noh stage at Asaba, and a glass broken at the inn’s entrance afterwards. Others borrow a story from this side of the world, like the red thread of fate one couple’s celebrant told at the foot of Mt Fuji.
A chapel. Many hotels and wedding halls have one, and the service follows the venue’s format.
Both. Some couples hold their own ceremony, then visit a shrine for a blessing, which gives them their own words and Japan’s rite in the same trip.
Who leads the ceremony shapes it as much as where it happens. A priest brings a rite. A celebrant brings a structure and the words to hold it. A friend brings everything they know about you, which is both the gift and the risk.
Inside a Shinto Wedding
At a shrine, the wedding often begins with a procession across the grounds: priests and shrine maidens first, then the couple beneath a red umbrella, then the families. Inside, the priest purifies everyone present and offers a prayer to the kami. At the heart of the ceremony is san-san-kudo, in which the couple share sake from three stacked cups, three sips from each. Then come the vows, read from a set text before the altar, most often by the groom, with the bride adding her name; the couple offer a branch of sakaki, the sacred evergreen; and a cup of sake is shared by both families, the moment they become one family. The order varies a little from shrine to shrine.
It’s short, twenty or thirty minutes, and it’s almost always in Japanese. That’s part of its weight. A shrine wedding isn’t staged for visitors, and the shrine will want to know you understand that. If you’d like to say your own vows, say them somewhere else in the day, or hold your own ceremony first and come to the shrine for its blessing.
Our Shinto wedding guide goes through the rite step by step.
Wedding Kimono and What to Wear
For the ceremony, a bride traditionally wears the shiromuku, a kimono that’s white in every layer. The iro-uchikake, a coloured outer robe, often follows it, has a portrait session of its own, or is worn for the ceremony itself. The groom’s formal dress is montsuki haori hakama: a black kimono and jacket bearing five family crests, over striped hakama. With the shiromuku, a bride traditionally wears a white wataboshi hood or a tsunokakushi, a strip of white silk worn across the front of the traditional bridal hairstyle, which today is often a wig. Many brides now wear their own hair with an ornament or flowers instead.
Couples from overseas can wear Japanese wedding kimono, and many of ours do. Respect is in the how: the right garments for the occasion, a trained dresser, and time. Dressing a bride in full kimono takes two hours or more once hair and make-up are included, so it has to be part of the plan from the start. Our guides to Japanese bridal kimono and to nihongami, the traditional bridal hairstyle explain what each piece means. A gown is just as welcome, and most of our couples bring their own.
How Much a Wedding in Japan Costs
A wedding in Japan costs what its days, its place and its people cost, far more than what its date costs.
For context, couples in Japan spent just under ¥3 million on their weddings on average in 2025, with around 57 guests, according to Zexy’s annual survey. Those are weddings held where the guests live, mostly at venues built for them, and a destination wedding asks other things of a budget: travel, more days, and places that weren’t built for weddings at all.
We quote every wedding for what it is, so these are starting points rather than prices. They’re ours, not averages for Japan, and we don’t sell packages.
- Elopements for two, from ¥1,000,000, with planning, 37 Frames photography and most location permits included.
- Bespoke weddings for around 50 to 100 guests, from ¥8,000,000. That’s the whole celebration’s starting budget, including our planning and production and 37 Frames photography, not our fee on its own.
From there, these move the figure most, roughly in order:
- How much has to be brought in. A hotel built for weddings already holds the chairs, the kitchen, the sound and the staff. A garden or a field holds none of it, so everything arrives, is set up, runs and is taken away again.
- How many days. A welcome dinner and a day after can do more for a trip than a bigger guest list.
- The place. A ryokan or villa given to one party for a night or two costs more than a room in a shared building, and buys you a day without strangers.
- How many guests, and how many of them you’re hosting.
- The ceremony. A shrine’s fee, a celebrant, an interpreter, musicians.
- The team. Planning, photography and film, hair and makeup, dressing.
- The season. Peak blossom and autumn weeks are scarce and priced that way.
For ranges across the country and what each part of a budget buys, see our wedding cost guide and, for two, our elopement cost guide. How our own fees work is on our planning investment page.
Japan’s Wedding Year, Season by Season
Japan doesn’t really have four seasons. Its old calendar has seventy-two, each about five days long, and the weather moves through them faster than most visitors expect (Japan doesn’t have four seasons). For a wedding, these are the ones that matter.
| When | What’s happening | What it means for a wedding |
|---|---|---|
| December to February | Cold, dry and clear on the Pacific side; deep snow in the north and the Alps | Mt Fuji’s most reliable weeks of the year, and snow weddings in Hakuba and Niseko |
| Late March to early May | Cherry blossom moving north, from Tokyo and Kyoto at the end of March to Aomori in April and Hokkaido by early May | Book early, and plan for the blossom front, not one tree |
| May | New green and mild days, after the Golden Week holidays at the start of the month | Fresh and comfortable, best once the holidays have passed |
| June to mid July | Tsuyu, the rainy season, across most of Japan (Okinawa’s comes in May and June, and Hokkaido has none) | Soft light and gardens at their greenest. Choose places as good inside as out |
| Mid July to August | Hot and humid in the cities, cooler in the mountains | The mountains and the north, and celebrations that start as the day cools |
| Late summer into autumn | Typhoon season, most likely in September, and from July in Okinawa and Kyushu | A second version of the plan, as good as the first |
| October to early December | Autumn colour moving south and down from the mountains; Kyoto at its peak from late November into early December | The second great season of the year |
Blossom is the hardest season to pin to a date, because the trees keep their own calendar. The averages put full bloom in Tokyo on 31 March, Kyoto on 4 April, Aomori on 26 April and Sapporo on 6 May. Recent springs have run ahead of them: in each of the last six years Aomori and Sapporo bloomed early, Sapporo by more than a week, and Tokyo’s full bloom has landed anywhere between 22 March and 4 April (Japan Meteorological Agency records). Kyoto’s autumn, meanwhile, peaks later than many visitors expect: the weather agency’s observation maple in the city reaches full colour on 5 December on average. Our guide to the best time to get married in Japan takes each season in turn.
Ask the Japanese side of the family, if there is one, whether the calendar matters. For some grandparents a lucky day is no small thing, and our Taian 2027 calendar marks every one. Our weddings often run midweek, which makes the best dates and rooms far easier to secure, and your guests will be on holiday anyway.
The Places We Return To
Choose the feeling first, then the ground. These are the parts of Japan we know best, and what each one does to a wedding.
Tokyo
In Tokyo a wedding can move: from a garden hidden behind old walls to a hotel fifty-two floors above the city to a crossing full of people who won’t give it a second glance, which is its own kind of privacy. One wedding on Tokyo Bay spent its cocktail hour afloat, with every guest out on the water while the reception was made ready on shore.
Kyoto
Kyoto’s famous places are full in every season, so its quiet version lives behind a gate. One couple eloped in a private garden in the hills when the maples were at their fullest, then came down into the city for the afternoon and finished on the stepping stones of the Kamo River at sunset.
Mt Fuji and the Five Lakes
Fuji shows itself on its own schedule, and the best weddings here are planned around that rather than against it. Winter mornings are the clearest, and some days it doesn’t appear at all. For one couple, the mountain was hidden when their vows began and clear of the cloud by the time they ended. Another married at a winery where the mountain stayed hidden through the ceremony and appeared in time for the speeches.
Hakone, Izu and the hot spring inns
Here a wedding becomes a stay. Everyone sleeps under one roof, there’s a bath before dinner and yukata after it, and the evening carries on in the rooms. Couples have married in a forest in Hakone with everyone they call home, on the Noh stage of Asaba, an inn in Shuzenji, with the bride crossing the pond by boat, and in the garden of Jinya, an old inn at Tsurumaki Onsen, closer to Tokyo than either.
Nara and the mountains of Kii
Nara’s countryside keeps a slower clock than Kyoto’s. In its hills there’s a pair of private villas we return to, each one given to a single party for the day, one of them looking out across an entire mountain range. One couple’s day took them from there to the Murou Art Forest and a pottery studio nearby.
Kawagoe and the old towns near Tokyo
In Kawagoe, northwest of Tokyo, the old merchant storehouses still line the streets. Couples have married in the garden at Tantoku, come to it after a boat ride beneath the blossom on the Shingashi River, and made a tea ceremony the heart of their wedding there.
The mountains: Yamanashi, Nagano and Hakuba
A village hotel spread through old houses in Kosuge gives a whole wedding party two nights under the same old roofs. In winter the Alps take over, with a snow wedding in Hakuba and a Nagano winter wedding.
Tohoku and the north
The blossom reaches the north last, which makes it the place to follow it. Couples have married under Aomori’s cherry trees and among the vines at Akiu, in the hills west of Sendai, at a winery that grew out of the region’s recovery after the 2011 earthquake. Further north, Hokkaido is snow, space and powder, and the weather has its own say: a Niseko wedding held through wind and rain.
Okinawa
In Japan’s subtropical south, the sea sets the clock. One couple married on the beach at Hyakuna Garan, timed to the tide. Rosewood brought us in to consult when it began holding weddings in Japan, and we photographed and filmed the first wedding at Rosewood Miyakojima.
Our bamboo forest
North of Tokyo there’s a bamboo forest we can open to our couples, lit after dark. One couple said their vows there in the rain, beneath an arch of bamboo.
How a Venue Hosts You
Japan’s wedding venues fall roughly into two kinds, and the difference shapes the whole day.
The first kind is built for Japanese weddings: the big hotels and the wedding halls, and they’re very good at it. On a busy day one building can hold several weddings back to back, so the timings are fixed, the packages are set and the house suppliers come with the room. Bringing in your own suppliers is the exception: Zexy’s 2024 survey found the venue’s photographer at more than nine weddings in ten and its florist at almost all of them, and a bride who brings her own dress is often charged a bring-in fee, the mochikomi-ryo.
The second kind hosts one celebration at a time: an inn given over to one wedding, a private garden, a hillside villa, a bamboo forest lit for one night. Here the day can follow you rather than a schedule, and the people you love can sleep under the same roof. They keep their own rules too. An old inn has neighbours who’ll be there long after the wedding has gone home, so the dancing has an end even when the night doesn’t.
Ask any venue whether the place will be yours, what happens if it rains, how late the music can play, whether the kitchen can cook for everyone, and who speaks Japanese to whom. Our guide to choosing a wedding venue in Japan takes each of those questions in turn.
Photographs, Film and Places That Belong to Someone
The photographs of a wedding in Japan are decided long before anyone lifts a camera: the hour of the ceremony and where the light will fall, how far the day travels, whether the portraits take a couple away from their guests or happen among them. That’s why our planners work with our photographers and filmmakers from the first conversation, and why the weddings we plan are photographed by our own team rather than an outside one. Film is optional, and what we mean by a cinematic wedding film is simple: nothing staged.
Much of the ground couples fall for in Japan was never meant for weddings. A shrine’s hillside, a city’s park, a lakeshore or a farmer’s field each has someone responsible for it, and each answers to its own rules. Shrines and temples often limit professional photography, public parks can ask for a permit, a few of the most photographed places in the country turn weddings away altogether. Drones have rules of their own: anything weighing 100 grams or more needs registering with Japan’s transport ministry before it flies outdoors, and flying close to people needs separate approval.
We’d take that as a reason to ask early, and properly. Asked that way, a place will often give a couple quiet and time, and sometimes a priest or a gardener who’s glad they came. Many of the places our couples marry are open to them because of relationships built over years, which is also why we keep so many of them unnamed. Our guide to choosing a wedding venue in Japan sets out what needs permission, and from whom.
LGBTQ Weddings in Japan
Japan doesn’t yet allow two men or two women to register a marriage. The question is now before the country’s Supreme Court, which in March 2026 sent six appeals to its fifteen-justice Grand Bench, after five of the six high courts that heard them found the current law unconstitutional. No hearing date has been set, and nobody can say yet when the Court will rule or what it will decide. We’ll update this guide the day it does. Many cities issue partnership certificates, Tokyo among them since 2022, but they aren’t marriages, and they’re for people who live, work or study in the city, so visiting couples can’t use them.
The celebration is open to everyone now. Because most of our couples marry legally at home, the wedding in Japan is the part that matters most to them, and it can be as full and as public as any other. Two brides married beneath the blossom at Jinya, two grooms held a tea ceremony wedding in old Kawagoe, and one couple came back for a proposal five years to the day, beneath a torii in the sky.
What Your Guests Should Know
Your guests won’t need Japanese. They’ll need two phrases, omedetō gozaimasu for congratulations and kanpai for the toast, and the good sense to follow whoever is in front of them.
A few things are worth telling them early:
- Dress code. At a destination wedding, yours is the one that counts. A Japanese couple’s wedding adds a few rules of its own: no white for guests, and a white or silver tie for men, since a black tie belongs at a funeral.
- Shoes. Many rooms are tatami, where shoes come off at the edge. Good socks matter more than guests expect.
- Gifts. Goshugi, money given in a special envelope, is the custom at a Japanese couple’s wedding. At a destination wedding, guests simply follow the couple’s wishes.
- Onsen and tattoos. Policies differ from inn to inn. Ask before you arrive, and know that many ryokan have private baths.
- Language. If your families don’t share a language, decide early how the speeches will reach everyone: an interpreter, a printed translation, or a shorter speech given in both.
Send them our guest guide to weddings in Japan, and our guide to travelling to Japan for a wedding for visas, what to pack and what’s changed this year.
Food, Drink and Every Guest at the Table
What’s on the table depends on where you are. Hotels and wedding halls tend to serve a plated course menu, more often French than anything else. A ryokan serves kaiseki, a procession of small courses that follows the region as closely as the month. Around the meal come the sake rituals: san-san-kudo at a shrine, and at a reception or welcome dinner kagami biraki, when the lid of a sake cask is opened with wooden mallets.
A Japanese kitchen can cook beautifully for vegetarian and vegan guests, especially when it draws on shojin ryori, the cooking of Buddhist temples. The thing to watch is what you can’t see. Dashi, the stock under so much Japanese food, is most often made with fish, and most soy sauce contains wheat. An allergy has to reach the kitchen in Japanese and by name, one ingredient at a time, long before the day. Our guide to wedding food and dietary needs in Japan goes into the detail.
The Shape of the Days
A Japanese wedding tends to fit inside one day, because its guests can be home by the last train. Yours probably won’t, because yours are crossing oceans, and one afternoon is a small return on a long-haul flight. The weddings that work best for them stretch across two or three days. There’s a welcome dinner the night before, where strangers become company, then the wedding, then a slower day with one shared plan and plenty of space around it.
Within the wedding day, leave room after the vows. The first minutes after a ceremony, with nothing to do and everyone you love in one place, pass quickly enough without anyone filling them. And keep some of the trip for the two of you, before everyone arrives or after they’ve gone. Our guide to planning a destination wedding weekend in Japan covers welcome dinners, looking after guests, the day after and the honeymoon.
The Order to Decide Things In
This is the order we’d take the decisions in. Most of the stress of planning a wedding in Japan comes from taking them in a different one.
- Decide the legal route. At home or in Japan. It changes what follows.
- Decide who’s coming. The two of you, a dozen people or fifty.
- Decide who works for you. A venue’s coordinator or an independent planner.
- Choose the season. Then a few weeks within it, rather than a single date.
- Choose the region and the feeling. Mountains, city, sea, snow or an old town.
- Choose the place for how it hosts you. Then hold the date, up to 18 months ahead.
- Tell your guests. The day the date is held. Sooner is kinder.
- Choose the ceremony and who leads it. Shrine, temple, garden, celebrant or friend.
- Ask for permission. For the shrine, the park, the drone and the place that belongs to someone.
- Plan the days around the wedding. The welcome dinner, the day after, the time for just the two of you.
- Plan the language and the table. Who needs to understand what, and who eats what.
- Plan the morning. Hair, makeup and kimono dressing take longer here than most couples expect.
- Plan the rain. A version of the day that’s as good as the one you hoped for.
Our step-by-step guide to where to start when you plan a wedding in Japan goes through each one, our wedding planning timeline for Japan puts each in its month, and the ten things couples wish they’d known are worth reading before you pay a deposit.
Quick Answers About Getting Married in Japan
How do you get married in Japan?
Legally, by filing a marriage notification at a city or ward office, with proof that each of you is free to marry, Japanese translations and the signatures of two adult witnesses. Ceremonially, almost any way you like, because no ceremony in Japan is legally binding. Most international couples marry legally at home and hold their wedding in Japan.
Can foreigners get married in Japan?
Yes, once the office is satisfied that each of you is free to marry. For couples who live here it’s simpler. For two visitors it’s slower and less certain: the office may consult the Legal Affairs Bureau, the review can run to weeks or months, and a decision may not come before you fly home.
Can tourists get married in Japan?
Tourists can try, but not every office accepts a filing from couples who are only visiting, and the review can outlast the trip. A wedding ceremony needs no residency at all, so most couples do the legal part at home and save Japan for the wedding itself.
How long does it take to get legally married in Japan?
Keep at least three full days of your trip for embassy appointments and the filing itself. The office’s review is what can stretch: for two foreign nationals who don’t live in Japan, Chuo Ward in Tokyo allows about four months, even in a simple case.
Do Americans still need an Affidavit of Competency to Marry?
Not from the US Embassy, which stopped notarising it on 1 September 2025 and now offers a letter explaining that the United States issues no such certificate. Some offices accept that. Others still ask for a sworn affidavit notarised in a US state, so ask the office where you’ll file.
Will our marriage be recognised at home?
If it’s valid in Japan, most countries recognise it. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland need nothing more, while France, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan ask you to transcribe or report it at home. Bring home the certificate of acceptance, and have a translator lined up for your own country’s records.
Is a wedding ceremony in Japan legally binding?
No. Whether it’s held at a shrine, a temple, a chapel or in a garden, a ceremony in Japan makes nobody legally married. A marriage is made by filing a marriage notification at a city or ward office, and once the office accepts it, the marriage dates from the day you filed.
Can foreigners have a Shinto wedding?
Yes. Plenty of shrines hold weddings for couples from overseas, provided you come to it as what it is, a religious rite led in Japanese. Each sets its own terms, so ask early.
How much does a wedding in Japan cost?
The number of days, the place, the guests and how much has to be brought in decide it, far more than the date does. Our elopements start from ¥1,000,000 and our bespoke weddings for 50 to 100 guests from ¥8,000,000, and our wedding cost guide sets out what the money buys.
When is the best time of year to get married in Japan?
Late March to early May for cherry blossom, moving north, and mid October to early December for autumn colour, with Kyoto at its peak from late November. On the Pacific side, winter is the clearest season. June to mid July brings the rain, and September is the month typhoons are most likely.
How far ahead should we plan a wedding in Japan?
Up to 18 months, if you’d like a particular season or place. We take bookings that far out, and the planning fills the final year. Spring and autumn dates go first at the places that take one wedding at a time.
Do we need a wedding planner in Japan?
The law doesn’t require one. In practice, a wedding here runs on conversations in Japanese, permissions, venue rules and suppliers who rarely take enquiries from abroad, and an independent planner carries all of that for you.
Can two men or two women marry in Japan?
Not legally yet. The question is before Japan’s Supreme Court, with no hearing date set. A wedding celebration in Japan is open to every couple, and most of ours marry legally at home anyway.
Can we propose in Japan?
Yes, and for some of our couples that’s where the story begins. The places that work best are quiet at the hour you need them, which the famous ones rarely are, so the planning matters as much as the ring. A surprise proposal at Mt Fuji shows how one comes together.
Do our guests need to speak Japanese?
No. Omedetō gozaimasu and kanpai will carry them through the day, and the planning should take care of the rest, from translated speeches to a menu they can read. Our FAQ has more on looking after them.
The Guide Is the Easy Part
In Japan the law asks for a sheet of paper and four signatures, two of them yours. Everything else in this guide is a choice: the season, the place, the people, the words, how long the dinner runs. That’s a lot of choices, and it’s the whole point. A wedding the law doesn’t require is one you get to make entirely your own.
None of what couples remember comes from a checklist. It’s tea poured for each set of parents on the stage of an old inn, a whole wedding stepping onto a boat the moment the vows are done, a mountain that appears in time for the speeches. Those come from choosing a place for the right reasons, giving the days room, and having someone hold the plan so you never have to. Japan is extraordinarily good at hosting. Ask it properly, and it will give you a wedding nobody else could have had.
Updated October 2026, and again whenever the law, the seasons or our weddings change. This guide is a planning overview rather than legal advice for your nationality, so check the current requirements with your embassy and the office where you’ll file. Prices are our own starting points, not averages for Japan. Sources: Japan’s Ministry of Justice, Q&A on international marriage (Japanese); Chuo Ward, Tokyo and Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto, on filings by visiting foreign nationals; the US Embassy and Consulates in Japan, Marriage in Japan; Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, apostilles; the Ministry of Justice, overview of the Civil Code amendments (Japanese); the embassies and governments linked in the country table; the Japan Meteorological Agency, cherry blossom records and Kyoto’s seasonal observations (Japanese); Zexy, Marriage Market Survey 2025 and Wedding Trend Survey 2024 (Japanese); Japan’s transport ministry, drone rules; the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, partnership oath system (Japanese); The Japan Times, on the Supreme Court referral; and the guides linked throughout, each written from weddings we’ve planned, photographed and filmed.
