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    Friends watch from white chairs as the couple kiss beneath a red wagasa in the garden at Tantoku, a Japanese garden wedding in Kawagoe.

    No. 323 Real Weddings & Elopements 7 min read

    Almost Ashore: A Japanese Garden Wedding at Tantoku in Kawagoe

    In the garden at Tantoku, a treasure ship has been about to reach the shore for more than a century. It’s a dry garden, so the sea is raked gravel and the ship is a stone, and the picture it holds is the moment before arrival: water brimming over from a well, and a vessel laden with riches drawing in to a coast the water has made rich. The back of the ship stone sits low, and the family’s own account says why. It’s the weight of everything on board. Of all the places we know for a Japanese garden wedding, few say so plainly what a wedding is.

    Seen from above, white chairs face a red wagasa in the raked gravel of Tantoku Garden, set for a Japanese garden wedding in Kawagoe.

    This couple came from Florida with a small circle of their closest friends, about a dozen in all, and one of those friends married them. They could have had a bigger room almost anywhere. They chose a house that takes twenty people at most, in Kawagoe, the old merchant town north-west of Tokyo that everyone still calls Little Edo, and they filled it with the people they’d most want beside them. We loved them for that choice.

    A Timber Merchant’s House in Little Edo

    Tantoku began in 1869 as a timber merchant in Kawagoe, and the family has kept the trade in the town for generations since. In 1901 the founder, Tokujiro Suzuki, built a house beside his garden, and he built it the way only a man who dealt in wood would. There’s a pillar of ebony, transoms cut from single great boards, and choice timber wherever you rest your eyes. Kawagoe City’s record of the house makes a point we love: after 120 years, nothing in it has warped. That, the city says, is what comes of being a timber merchant. The second generation added the main house in 1929, with a Western-style reception room joined to it, so the work of two generations now stands under connected roofs.

    It’s worth knowing when he built it. Eight years earlier, in 1893, fire had taken a third of Kawagoe, and the town was still putting itself back together. Tantoku’s house belongs to that rebuilding generation: a merchant family putting its best material into something meant to outlast them, and a garden made to picture good fortune coming in.

    The wedding party gathers on the stepping stones before the tiled Meiji house at Tantoku Garden in Kawagoe, under a clear blue sky.
    A lattice ranma transom glows with paper light between beams of dark polished timber in the old timber merchant's house in Kawagoe.
    The couple and their friends line up before the two storey timber facade of the Meiji merchant house at Tantoku Garden in Kawagoe.
    The bride and groom peek out from under an orange noren marked with the house crest at the timber doorway of the old house at Tantoku.

    Today the house and its garden of 200 tsubo, about 660 square metres, are given whole to one Japanese garden wedding at a time, for no more than twenty guests. Tantoku’s okami writes that nothing honours her more than a couple spending the day they’ll remember all their lives in the place the family has kept for generations. Tantoku’s weddings for couples from overseas are planned and produced by our planning team, with our photographers and filmmakers on the day. Of all the wedding venues near Tokyo, it’s one we know from the inside, the way you know a friend’s family home.

    Twenty Chairs, at Most

    A wedding this size has no audience. Everyone there is part of it, and the day becomes something the whole group makes rather than something it watches. That begins well before the ceremony. With the house to themselves, the morning stopped being preparation and became part of the wedding: whisky and cigars on his side of the house, champagne and her closest friends on hers, and nobody waiting in a lobby for anything to start. It had already started, and everyone who mattered was in it.

    The groom in an ivory dinner jacket checks his watch on a bamboo bench, a bottle in his hand, before his Japanese garden wedding.
    The bride laughs with a friend beside her lace wedding gown hanging in the old house, getting ready for her wedding in Kawagoe.
    The bride stands in her lace gown and long veil by a green curtained window, soft side light falling across the room of the old house.
    The groom in an ivory dinner jacket pours whisky into a glass in window light on the morning of his wedding in Kawagoe.
    The groom and his friends sip whisky on a long bench beside a suit of samurai armour in the wood panelled front room of the house.
    The groom lights a cigar with a friend in sunglasses beside him, smoke curling through the garden light on the wedding morning.
    The bride and groom cut a two tier white wedding cake beside a suit of samurai armour in the front room of the old house at Tantoku.

    This is what an intimate wedding in Japan does best, and it’s why we believe in them. People who’d normally meet at a reception table spent a whole day side by side, in a Meiji garden, on an Edo-style street, and in the middle of Tokyo at night. By the evening, a group of friends had a day in common that none of them could have had at home.

    • A stone lantern and a bamboo spout over a stone water basin among ferns and moss in the garden at Tantoku in Kawagoe.
    • Japanese maple leaves still green in early October hang over the garden at Tantoku in Kawagoe on the morning of the wedding.
    • Maple leaves just turning orange at the tips catch the sun against a pale sky over the garden at Tantoku in Kawagoe.
    • An ivory dinner jacket hangs in the tokonoma alcove beside a calligraphy scroll in the Meiji house at Tantoku Garden.
    • Two wedding bands, one set with diamonds and one in brushed silver, rest together on a dark surface before the ceremony.
    • A drone view looks down on the red wagasa and white chairs waiting among clipped shrubs in the gravel garden at Tantoku.
    • The groom adjusts his braces and cufflinks in a white dress shirt in soft window light, getting ready for his wedding.
    • The groom in braces and a black bow tie looks toward a window, dark timber behind him, a portrait in black and white.
    • The groom in an ivory dinner jacket and orange boutonniere looks across the sunlit garden of the old house in Kawagoe.
    • The groom stands by a glass door that reflects him and the green garden behind, in an ivory jacket and black bow tie.
    • Leaf shadows fall across the groom's ivory dinner jacket as he looks up into the trees of the garden at Tantoku.
    • The groom smiles to one side in his dinner jacket against the dark pines of the garden, a portrait in black and white.
    • The groom and his friends raise whisky glasses together by the tall windows of the front room on the wedding morning.
    • The bride in her lace gown and sheer veil turns toward the window light in a pale room of the old house in Kawagoe.
    • The bride's lace train spreads across the floor as she faces a bright window in a tatami room, in black and white.
    • The bride's long veil and lace train fan out behind her in a quiet tatami room of the old house, in black and white.
    • A friend in a navy three piece suit holds a cigar in both hands in the sunshine of the garden on the wedding morning.
    • The groom lights a cigar as a friend in sunglasses and a navy suit laughs beside him in the garden before the ceremony.
    • Cigar smoke curls around the groom's face in strong side light, a close portrait from the wedding morning in black and white.
    • Ten men in suits and shirtsleeves line up against a dark timber fence under tall trees at Tantoku, drinks in hand.
    • A friend in sunglasses and a navy suit laughs with the groom beside the timber fence of the garden, a bottle in hand.
    • The groom in an ivory dinner jacket shares a drink and a laugh with a friend in a blue suit by a dark timber gate.
    • The bride looks down at her hands in a lace gown and veil, lit softly from the side in a white room, in black and white.
    • Through the frame of a dark doorway, the bride stands in her lace gown and veil by a window, in black and white.

    A Japanese Garden Wedding Beside the Treasure Ship

    They married in the gravel garden itself, under a red wagasa, with their friends close enough to reach out and touch. At its heart they shared san-san-kudo, the exchange of sake from three cups, three sips from each, a promise made with the hands as well as the words.

    Friends sit in white chairs in the gravel garden at Tantoku as the couple marry beneath a red wagasa, a Japanese garden wedding.
    The couple stand with the friend leading their ceremony beneath a red wagasa, maples and shrubs close around them in Kawagoe.
    The groom sips sake from a red lacquer cup during san san kudo, the three cup sake exchange at their Japanese garden wedding.
    The bride holds a red lacquer sake cup in both hands during san san kudo, her lace gown catching the light of the garden.
    The couple kiss beneath a red wagasa in the garden at Tantoku, a Japanese garden wedding in Kawagoe near Tokyo.
    Their friends throw their arms in the air around the newlyweds under the red wagasa in the gravel garden at Tantoku.

    A karesansui isn’t made to be walked through. Tantoku describes theirs as a garden to be enjoyed from a single seat and read like a picture, and the picture has no people in it: a well, a shore and a ship coming in. For one October morning, the shore had people on it, and they were waiting for the ship.

    There’s a reason a garden would choose to hold the moment before arrival rather than arrival itself. It’s the most hopeful moment there is. Everything is still on board, nothing has been spent, and the shore is close enough to see. A Japanese garden wedding stands in exactly that place. The couple made their promises beside a ship that has been drawing in since the Meiji era and never quite landing, and began something that, if it goes the way it should, will feel the same way for a long time: always arriving, and low in the water with everything they carry.

    • White chairs fill with friends around a red wagasa and stone lantern in the gravel garden as the ceremony begins at Tantoku.
    • The officiant reads from a folder between the groom and the bride under the maples of the garden at Tantoku in Kawagoe.
    • The bride listens during the ceremony, flowers in her hair and a bouquet of deep red blooms in her hands, the garden behind.
    • The bride looks up at the groom over his shoulder during their ceremony under the trees of the garden in Kawagoe.
    • The groom takes a sip of sake beneath the red wagasa, the bride beside him, during san san kudo in the garden at Tantoku.
    • The groom slides a ring onto the bride's finger, his ivory sleeve beside her lace gown, at their garden ceremony.
    • The groom places the ring on the bride's hand beneath the red wagasa as the officiant holds the folder beside them.
    • Seen from above, friends in white chairs watch the ring exchange beneath the red wagasa in the gravel garden at Tantoku.
    • Friends rise and cheer as the newlyweds turn to walk back up the gravel aisle in the garden at Tantoku in Kawagoe.
    • The newlyweds walk up the gravel aisle between white chairs as their friends stand and cheer, the red wagasa behind them.
    • A friend hugs the bride tightly as others raise phones and glasses of champagne, just after the garden ceremony.
    • Friends laugh and film on their phones as the groom stands with his back to the camera, just married, in black and white.
    • A drone view looks straight down on the wedding party gathered beneath the red wagasa in the gravel garden at Tantoku.
    • Friends gather around the newlyweds under the red wagasa, arms up and cheering, among the rocks and shrubs of the garden.
    • The bride laughs with her friends, champagne in hand, as the groom stands beside her in the garden after the ceremony.
    • The bride and her friends laugh together, champagne glasses raised, beside the groom after the ceremony, in black and white.

    The Fox’s Shrine and the Fuji Stone

    In a corner of the garden stands the family shrine, Jutoku Myojin. In 1898 the founder travelled to Fushimi Inari in Kyoto and brought home the spirit of Inari to enshrine here, the kami merchants have prayed to for prosperity for centuries. The shrine sits on a base of lava from Mt Fuji, and in that base the family left a small cave, a place for the shrine’s fox to rest.

    The couple stand beneath the wooden torii of the small family shrine in the garden at Tantoku, stepping stones at their feet.
    The bride and groom smile beneath the weathered torii of the garden shrine, maples overhead, after their wedding in Kawagoe.
    Dappled light falls through the bride's veil as it lifts in the wind beneath the maples of the garden at Tantoku.
    The couple sit together in the roofed garden pavilion at Tantoku, her lace train spread across the swept earth floor.
    The groom leans his head toward the bride as she smiles, his orange boutonniere bright against his ivory dinner jacket.
    The bride toasts with her friends in rust, red and floral dresses on the stone step of the engawa at the old house.
    The newlyweds hurry hand in hand across the gravel past the red wagasa, blurred in motion, in the garden at Tantoku.

    It says something about a house when it builds a resting place for a guest nobody will ever see. The care at Tantoku runs all the way down to the foundations. That’s the kind of hospitality we look for in every place we bring a couple to, and it’s rarer than a beautiful garden.

    • The bride looks over her shoulder through her long veil in deep shade, a portrait in the garden at Tantoku in black and white.
    • The bride and groom stand on a stepping stone beneath the torii of the garden shrine, a stone lantern among the green.
    • The groom holds the bride from behind as she looks down at her bouquet of deep red flowers among the maples of the garden.
    • The bride's veil streams sideways in the wind as she stands on the stepping stones below the shrine torii, in black and white.
    • The bride's veil lifts in the breeze as she walks the stepping stones toward the garden shrine's torii at Tantoku.
    • The bride smiles with her eyes lowered, soft green leaves blurred in front of her, in a garden portrait in Kawagoe.
    • The bride stands with her back to the camera under the shrine torii, green maples all around, her veil falling to the stones.
    • The groom laughs with a bottle in his hand, in an ivory dinner jacket and black bow tie, in the green of the garden at Tantoku.
    • The bride and her friends clink champagne glasses on a bench of the old house, laughing, just after the garden ceremony.
    • The bride sits on the stone step as her friends raise champagne above her on the engawa of the Meiji house at Tantoku.
    • Leaf shadows pattern the bride's veil as it billows around her shoulders beneath the orange tipped maples of the garden.
    • The bride looks up into the light, her veil drawn back around her in dappled shade, a portrait in black and white.
    • The bride's veil catches the sun and the shadows of maple leaves as she turns her face into the light in the garden.
    • The bride sits alone in the roofed garden pavilion at Tantoku, her veil and lace train pooled across the earth floor.
    • The couple sit close on the pavilion bench, her train falling to the swept floor, the green of the garden behind them.
    • The bride rests her head against the groom's in the shade of the garden pavilion, her veil draped over them both.
    • The groom leans in toward the bride as she laughs in the garden pavilion, her veil between them, in black and white.
    • The bride's lace train and heeled shoes rest on the pavilion floor beside her bouquet of deep red flowers and ribbons.
    • The bride smiles with her eyes closed as the groom rests his head against hers, a close portrait in black and white.
    • The groom sits on a stone step as the bride leans on a timber post beside him, her train flowing down to the moss.
    • The bride walks through dappled shade on the gravel of the garden, a stone lantern behind her, in black and white.
    • The groom holds the bride close among pines and shrubs in the garden at Tantoku in Kawagoe, in black and white.
    • The couple walk across the gravel toward the maples, a glimpse of the red wagasa behind them in the garden at Tantoku.

    The Bell Kawagoe Rebuilt First

    From the garden they walked out into Kawagoe itself, still dressed for the ceremony, with their friends around them. The old town has its own story about what matters most, and it’s written into the street.

    In 1893 the Great Fire of Kawagoe burned a third of the town. A few storehouses came through it. One was the Ōsawa house, a kimono merchant’s shop built in 1792, and the city credits it with showing Kawagoe how to rebuild. The merchants rebuilt in its image, in thick clay walls and heavy tiled roofs, and that’s why the kurazukuri street still looks the way it does, keeping a face of Edo that Tokyo itself no longer has.

    But before many of them had rebuilt their own shops, they rebuilt the bell. The Toki no Kane had told the town the time for more than two and a half centuries. The year after the fire, a Kawagoe carpenter raised a new tower and a Kawagoe founder recast the bell, because, as the town’s tourist association puts it, daily life can’t do without the time. It still rings four times a day.

    The newlyweds cross Kawagoe's kurazukuri street hand in hand in front of an old merchant shop, visitors all around them.
    The couple walk beneath the Toki no Kane, the wooden bell tower of Kawagoe, among visitors on the old street.
    A rickshaw blurs past the newlyweds on the kurazukuri street in Kawagoe's old town, Little Edo, near Tokyo.
    The bride and groom smile at each other beside a small vermilion torii in a lane of Kawagoe's old town.
    The couple and their friends stride across a street together in their wedding clothes, laughing, in the afternoon.

    We think about that often. A town with no roofs, and the first thing its merchants put back was the one thing that let everyone share the same hour. A destination wedding does something like it. For one day, people who live on different clocks, in different cities, keep the same time. They married in the week the old calendar calls kōgan kitaru, when the wild geese return, which suited a group of people who’d crossed an ocean to be in one garden together.

    • A two tier white wedding cake decorated with rust and copper sugar flowers stands on a wooden cake stand at Tantoku.
    • The groom feeds the bride a bite of wedding cake beside a suit of samurai armour in the front room of the old house.
    • A friend in a dark suit laughs out loud at the cake cutting in the front room of the house, in black and white.
    • Friends gather around the cake table in the open front of the old merchant house at Tantoku, seen from the street.
    • The wedding party walks in a line past the two storey timber facade of the Meiji merchant house at Tantoku in Kawagoe.
    • The couple and their friends walk along the old merchant house at Tantoku beneath its long tiled roofs and lattice windows.
    • Framed through a gap in a fence, the couple peek out from under an orange noren at the doorway of the old house.
    • The bride steps out from under the orange noren at the doorway of the old house as the groom waits at its side.
    • The bride stands at a weathered timber gate beneath a spreading pine, her lace train falling on the stone path.
    • The bride reaches up to the timber gate under the pine, her veil and lace train flowing behind her, at Tantoku.
    • The bride eats a skewer of street food outside a shop with a miso noren as the groom watches, on Kawagoe's old street.
    • The couple walk hand in hand on Ichibangai in Kawagoe, the tiled roofs and sign of an old kurazukuri shop behind them.
    • The newlyweds kiss beside the timber doors of a white walled kura storehouse in Kawagoe's old town, Little Edo.
    • The couple walk through a crowd of visitors on Kawagoe's old street, arm in arm, in black and white.
    • Visitors turn to watch as the bride and groom walk up the old street of Kawagoe's kurazukuri town hand in hand.
    • The couple sit on a red cushioned bench beneath hanging paper autumn leaves in a lane of Kawagoe's old town.
    • The couple and their friends stride out across a road together, one friend leaping, their wedding clothes bright on the street.

    Shibuya, After Dark

    The day ended at Shibuya Crossing after dark, in the clothes they’d married in, and the night carried on with their friends in a private karaoke room, drum kit included. The garden in Kawagoe has held one moment still for more than a century. The crossing doesn’t hold anything still for longer than a change of the lights. They went from one to the other in a single day, which is as good a short account of Japan as we know. Another celebration of ours in the same garden ended at the crossing too, in cherry blossom season.

    The bride and groom walk hand in hand across Shibuya Crossing at night, the neon screens of Tokyo ahead of them.
    The newlyweds stand still in the middle of Shibuya Crossing as crowds stream past under the lights of Tokyo at night.
    The bride throws an arm in the air as she and the groom cross Shibuya Crossing through the crowd, neon all around.

    People sometimes ask why a couple would cross the world to marry in a garden that holds twenty. We think the answer is in the ship stone. A wedding isn’t the voyage and it isn’t the landing. It’s the moment in between, low in the water with everything you’re bringing, the shore close enough to see and your people close enough to touch. Tantoku has been keeping that moment for more than a century. For one October morning, it kept theirs.

    • The bride and groom stand at the edge of Shibuya Crossing at night, traffic streaking past under the neon of Tokyo.
    • The couple wait hand in hand on the painted stripes of Shibuya Crossing as a taxi passes beneath the city's screens.
    • The newlyweds walk toward the camera across Shibuya Crossing as crowds and neon signs blur around them at night.
    • The couple stand together in the middle of the crossing in Shibuya as people pass on every side, in black and white.
    • The couple walk away hand in hand beneath towering lit screens at Shibuya Crossing, in black and white.
    • The bride and groom cross the wide painted stripes of Shibuya Crossing toward bright towers at night, in black and white.
    • The couple stand in the centre of Shibuya Crossing in their wedding clothes as the crowd rushes past in a blur of light.
    • The groom looks down at the bride as they cross among hundreds of people at Shibuya Crossing, neon towers behind.
    • The bride looks up at the groom in the middle of Shibuya Crossing, a crowd and glowing billboards filling the frame behind.
    • A vertical view of Shibuya Crossing at night, the couple small among the crowd beneath a tall red lit tower.
    • The bride waves as the groom smiles, the two of them crossing Shibuya through the crowd in their wedding clothes.
    • The newlyweds cross Shibuya together, her arm raised high, as the city lights and the crowd swirl around them at night.
    • The couple cross Shibuya in motion, the neon screens behind them smeared into streaks of colour at night.
    • The bride and groom walk away into the crowd on the far side of Shibuya Crossing, among the lit shopfronts of Tokyo.
    • The bride and groom move into the crowd at Shibuya at night, his ivory jacket bright among the passers by.
    • The couple spin through a blur of neon and passers by in Shibuya at night, the last frames of their wedding day.
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    37 Frames

    37 Frames is a wedding planning, photography and film studio in Tokyo, founded by Tracey Taylor and Dee Green. The studio plans weddings and elopements across Japan and around the world. Its weddings have appeared in Vogue and The New York Times.

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