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Real Weddings & Elopements 9 min read

Thanks for Showing Up: An Onsen Wedding in Japan

The bride and groom stand beneath pink cherry blossom beside raked gravel in the garden at Motoyu Jinya, her train sweeping the stones.

The groom at this onsen wedding in Japan had nothing written down. When the officiant asked for vows, he turned to the woman he was marrying and said, “Thanks for showing up today.” It’s the line you’d use on a friend who made it to your birthday, and he knew it, so he added that he meant it. In a world that makes it easy not to show up, he told her, she always does: for her patients, her friends and her family, for him, and for herself.

It’s a funny line. It’s also, once you sit with it, close to the whole of a marriage. Showing up ran through every part of this Japanese-Filipino celebration at Motoyu Jinya in Tsurumaki Onsen, a wedding that began, in a way, in another hot spring two years earlier. It was how he ended the night, too: thanking a room full of people who had flown in from around the world, for showing up.

The bride and groom hold hands framed by a round window at their onsen wedding in Japan, a dark wooden room around them.
The groom in a barong throws his arms wide beside the bride under garden flowers as guests lift their phones at a Japanese-Filipino wedding.

Boston, Manila, and Everywhere in Between

She was finishing her medical residency in Boston. He was in Manila, where he and his best friend build houses and develop land. Relatives introduced them by email, and they met for the first time in Manila. Then came the distance: oceans, time zones and two careers that don’t bend easily. At the welcome dinner, her best friend from college, who’d found her on their first day there by overhearing her speak Japanese in a bookstore, gave them the line we’d keep: “may you never forget how hard the distance was and how easy loving each other has been.”

Her father is Japanese, from Fukuoka. Her mother’s side is Filipino, and she’d gone to the Philippines to immerse herself in that heritage. Manila is where the two of them first met. Her own map of Japan runs through Fukuoka and Okinawa, with years in Aomori. So the question was never whether it would be Japan, only how. Their brief was short and exact: “high-end, classy, private”, then “a mix of traditional Japanese/classy, and then a whole bunch of fun afterwards”. His family, she warned us, know how to party.

She already knew our work when she wrote to us. “I follow 37Frames as I’m such a fan of their work,” she told her guests. After our first call she thanked us for “re-instilling the joy in our wedding planning”, and he wrote that we’d given them “a new hope that wedding planning isn’t going to be all that painful”. Two people running demanding lives on opposite sides of the Pacific didn’t need more choices. They needed someone to hold the structure while they stayed in their own lives, which is most of what planning a wedding in Japan from abroad comes down to.

The bride stands between her father in a morning coat and a woman in butterfly sleeves, in a tatami room in black and white.
Family in barong and butterfly sleeves laugh together on a veranda on the morning of an onsen wedding at Tsurumaki Onsen.

Straight to the Final Exam

His first trip to meet her family was to Fukuoka, and her family loves onsen. So his first proper meeting with her father took place in a hot spring near Fukuoka. His best friend told the story at the welcome dinner: “Straight to the final exam? No introductions, no practice, just full transparency from day one.”

Japanese has a phrase for what happened in that water. Hadaka no tsukiai, naked fellowship, is the companionship of the shared bath, and the dictionary defines its hadaka as having nothing concealed. Nobody arrives at an onsen as anyone but themselves. There are no suits to hide in, no titles and nothing to perform.

He passed. At the wedding her father gave the onsen some of the credit: that first experience, he said, must have left a deep impression, enough to inform their choice to celebrate at one. So a man who sat his final exam in a hot spring near Fukuoka came to stand in a garden in Kanagawa and thank his bride for showing up. At an onsen, showing up as yourself is the only way in.

Raindrops ring the surface of a garden pond at Tsurumaki Onsen the day before the wedding, leaves leaning over the water.
A koi swims below a small mossy waterfall in the garden of Motoyu Jinya, ferns and leaves above the dark water.

Tsurumaki Onsen, the Water No One Was Looking For

Tsurumaki Onsen began as a disappointment. Sometime around the turn of the last century (Hadano’s tourism association gives both 1889 and 1914), villagers digging wells for drinking water found it salty and harsh: no good to drink and no use for the fields. So they bathed in it instead. The water turned out to carry calcium in quantities Motoyu Jinya describes as among the highest in the world. By the Taishō era, pilgrims bound for Mt Ōyama were riding out by horse carriage from Hiratsuka and stopping here to soak on the way.

Motoyu, the first word of Jinya’s name, means the source spring, and the ryokan still fills its guest-room baths from the spring it calls Number One, long prized in Tsurumaki. For two days the whole of Jinya, its garden, its old wooden halls and its water, belonged to this couple and their people. They had asked for nature and water. He loves water; she loves the life of a garden. It’s hard to think of a better answer than a spring that was found by accident and has drawn people back for more than a century.

Showing up has a long history in Tsurumaki. Ōyama’s pilgrims came a long way to pray on a mountain and stopped here for the bath. A wedding guest flying in from New York, London or Manila makes a smaller pilgrimage, and the water at the end of it is the same.

Wedding guests cross a wooden bridge over the pond at Motoyu Jinya, with the old wooden hall and pines of the garden behind.
  • A wooden bridge and lanterns light a path through the garden of Motoyu Jinya in Tsurumaki Onsen on a grey spring evening.
  • An old stone lantern stands beside the pond under a curving pine branch in the Japanese garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • Fallen pink cherry petals scatter across a wet dark stone in the garden at Tsurumaki Onsen after spring rain.
  • A branch of pink cherry blossom hangs against a soft green garden in Kanagawa, the week of an onsen wedding.
  • The tiled roof and carved gable of an old wooden building at Motoyu Jinya, with green trees and a few blossoms around it.
  • Wet stepping stones curve through dark gravel in the Japanese garden at Motoyu Jinya on the morning of the wedding.
  • A paper lantern hangs at the entrance of a traditional wooden building at Motoyu Jinya, framed by a mossy tree and garden.
  • Pink cherry blossom fills the frame on bare branches above the garden at Tsurumaki Onsen in late March.
  • A small wooden garden shrine with paper streamers sits among greenery under a branch of pink cherry blossom.
  • Raindrops cling to small green leaves on a dark background in the garden at Motoyu Jinya, the morning of the wedding.

Yukata, a Sake Barrel, and the Usu and Kine

The fun began a night early. Everyone came to the welcome dinner in the cotton robes an onsen gives its guests, and the yukata did what it always does: grandparents, doctors, builders and children, from two families and many friendships, all in the same plain robe at the same long tables. There’s no quicker way to turn a guest list into a household.

Both families gathered around a sake barrel for kagami biraki, breaking open its lid with wooden mallets for good fortune. The barrel wasn’t finished that night. It came back the next evening with clear instructions from the microphone: “tonight, this sake needs to be finished.”

Then the usu and the kine came out, the wooden mortar and the long mallet for pounding mochi. As it was explained to the room, the two of them stand for the couple, and the rice between them for the prosperity of the home they’ll make together. Rice ran through the whole weekend, if you looked for it: in the barrel, in the mortar, and at the very end, in two sacks for their parents.

The paperwork had been done months before, at a ward office in Fukuoka with both sets of parents there and the couple in Japanese dress. Jinya was for everyone else. That’s what the extra night is for: by the time the mochi was pounded, the families had stopped being two sides of an aisle.

Two families in yukata raise wooden mallets over a sake barrel for kagami biraki at a welcome dinner at Motoyu Jinya.
The bride and groom in red and blue happi coats pound mochi together in a wooden mortar at their wedding welcome party.
The couple stand forehead to forehead in silhouette as rain falls through the light, a night portrait in black and white.
  • Rows of hand-painted character macarons lined up on a wooden board at a wedding welcome party in Japan.
  • A koto player in a black kimono plays on tatami while a small boy in a yukata watches at a wedding welcome dinner in Japan.
  • A straw-wrapped sake barrel waits for kagami biraki in a tatami hall lit by lanterns at a ryokan welcome dinner.
  • The couple in yukata walk through the lit garden under a red umbrella on a rainy evening at Tsurumaki Onsen.
  • The couple share a red umbrella beside the garden stream as rain falls at night at Motoyu Jinya.
  • Both families gather round the sake barrel with wooden mallets for kagami biraki, a boy helping in the middle.
  • Mallets come down on the sake barrel as the families break it open together at a wedding welcome dinner in Japan.
  • Guests in yukata raise wooden masu cups high in a toast after kagami biraki at the welcome dinner.
  • The whole family raises cups around the opened sake barrel, everyone in yukata, at an onsen wedding welcome dinner.
  • A guest in a yukata gives a speech into a microphone, a drink in his other hand, at a wedding welcome dinner in Japan.
  • The bride and groom laugh at the table among friends in yukata during the welcome dinner speeches.
  • Guests in yukata laugh and clap at long tables in a wooden hall at a destination wedding welcome dinner in Japan.
  • The couple in happi coats swing the wooden kine as a helper in kimono turns the mochi in the usu at their welcome party.
  • The bride in a happi coat brings down the wooden mallet into the mortar, pounding mochi at her wedding welcome night.
  • The groom ladles sake from the opened barrel into a guest's glass, both in yukata, at the welcome dinner in Japan.
  • A guest in a yukata laughs as she swings a drumstick at a large taiko drum in a tatami hall, in black and white.
  • A guest in a yukata strikes a taiko drum in the dining hall at a wedding welcome party in Japan, in black and white.
  • The bride in a yukata and haori swings a drumstick high beside a big taiko drum on the welcome night, in black and white.
  • The couple lean together in silhouette as rain catches the light in the garden at night, a portrait in black and white.
  • The couple embrace on a lantern-lit path under tall trees in the garden at Tsurumaki Onsen at night, in black and white.

Barong, Butterfly Sleeves and a Japanese House

On the wedding morning the groom and his groomsmen dressed in barong, the embroidered, sheer shirt that is the Philippines’ national formal wear. It’s worn untucked over an undershirt and was traditionally made from pineapple or abacá fibre. The women of the family wore butterfly sleeves. Her father wore a morning coat, and she wore a gown with a distinctive bow and carried yellow orchids.

Nobody blended anything into a theme. Each family came dressed as itself into a Japanese house of tatami and shoji, and none of it needed explaining. That’s a kind of showing up as well: not leaving half of who you are at home because the wedding is in someone else’s country. A Japanese-Filipino wedding didn’t need a fusion concept. It needed room, and an old Japanese house had plenty.

The groom smiles as he fastens his watch, sitting in an embroidered barong in a dark room on the morning of his wedding.
The groom and groomsmen in barong and suits line up with a woman in butterfly sleeves on the veranda of an old Japanese house.
The bride in her strapless wedding gown stands by the windows of a tatami corridor, her train spread across the mats.
The bride under a sheer veil holds a bouquet of yellow orchids in soft window light inside a traditional Japanese house.
The bride with her father, bridesmaids in green and red, and family in a tatami room, holding her yellow bouquet.
  • A bottle of Japanese single malt whisky stands on a dark table in warm light on the groom's wedding morning.
  • A steel watch with a blue dial lies on a black surface, a detail from the groom getting ready for his onsen wedding.
  • Two diamond wedding bands rest on a black reflective surface, lines of light curving behind them.
  • The groomsmen in barong laugh and move around a tatami room with shoji windows on the morning of the wedding.
  • Two men hold up an embroidered barong shirt between them as the groom gets dressed for his wedding in Japan.
  • The groom buttons his embroidered barong in a dark room, light falling across the fabric, in black and white.
  • The groom and a groomsman button their barong beside a round window in a dark wooden room, in black and white.
  • A close view of hands fastening the cuff of an embroidered barong, the textured weave catching the light.
  • The groom laughs, looking towards the window in his embroidered barong, a black and white portrait from his wedding morning.
  • The groom in his barong leans by a shoji doorway in a wooden room, looking out towards the light.
  • The groom, groomsmen and family laugh together on the veranda of a Japanese house, a lantern hanging above them.
  • Groomsmen open patterned gift pouches under the eaves of a Japanese house, laughing together, in black and white.
  • The groom's party raise small glasses together under the eaves, laughing, in black and white.
  • The groomsmen in suits and barong raise small glasses in a close circle on the veranda of an old Japanese house.
  • The groom's party raise their glasses in a line in front of the veranda of a Japanese house on the wedding morning.
  • Two groomsmen in a suit and a barong laugh together on a garden path among trees, in black and white.
  • Family in barong and butterfly sleeves laugh together in front of a round window on a Japanese veranda.
  • A woman in butterfly sleeves and an orange skirt fixes a man's barong in a round doorway that opens onto the garden.
  • The wedding gown and a barong hang from the ceiling of a tatami room with an alcove and a potted pine.
  • Pale pink bridal flats, a jewelled hair comb and a sprig of white blossom lie on tatami under a fold of sheer veil.
  • A sprig of pink cherry blossom rests across a soft pink bridal shoe on tatami, a detail from the wedding morning.
  • A diamond engagement ring reflected on a black surface between sprigs of pink cherry blossom.
  • A pair of golden pearl earrings reflected on a black surface among white blossom, the bride's wedding morning detail.
  • A diamond ring sits on a reflective surface washed in deep red light, a wedding detail for an onsen wedding in Japan.
  • Bridesmaids lift the train of the bride's gown as she walks along a tatami corridor beside tall wooden windows.
  • The bride fastens an earring in soft window light, her hair loose over her shoulder, getting ready in a Japanese house.
  • The bride smiles towards the window in her strapless gown, pearl earrings catching the light inside a traditional Japanese house.
  • The bridesmaids in green, gold and red wrap their arms around the seated bride, all laughing together on the wedding morning.
  • The bride hugs a family member in an embroidered dress beside the windows of a tatami room on her wedding morning.
  • The bride stands by the windows of a tatami corridor in her gown, scroll calligraphy on the wall beside her.
  • A loose bouquet of yellow oncidium orchids held against the white of the wedding gown, close up in soft light.
  • The bride holds her yellow orchid bouquet at her waist, the strapless bodice of her gown soft in the background.
  • The bride hugs her father in his morning coat while a woman in butterfly sleeves smiles beside them, in black and white.
  • A woman in a Filipiniana dress with butterfly sleeves fixes the bride's hair as she holds her yellow bouquet by the window.
  • The bride looks out from under her sheer veil, holding yellow orchids, in a tatami room at an onsen wedding in Japan.
  • The bride holds the edges of her long sheer veil, eyes lowered, in warm window light inside a Japanese house.
  • The bride stands under her veil in a tatami room with calligraphy and a garden window, a black and white portrait.
  • A close portrait of the bride under her sheer veil, eyes lowered, calligraphy on the wall behind her, in black and white.

They saw each other first in the garden, before anyone else did, under trees still wet from days of spring rain.

The bride hugs the groom in his barong at their first look in the garden, her yellow orchids held up behind his back.
The groom in his barong kisses the bride's cheek as she smiles with her yellow bouquet on the veranda of a Japanese house.
  • The bride and groom embrace at their first look under the trees of the Japanese garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • The bride holds the groom tight at their first look by a bamboo fence in the garden, her bouquet in one hand.
  • The groom's arms around the bride at their first look, her yellow orchid bouquet resting on his barong shoulder.
  • The groom covers his face as the bride lifts her bouquet high at their first look in the garden, in black and white.
  • The bride and groom walk arm in arm along a garden path under the trees, in black and white.
  • The bride and groom walk together along a green garden path, smiling at each other, her yellow bouquet in hand.
  • The groom kisses the bride's temple as she looks down smiling, a black and white portrait in the garden.
  • The groom in his barong looks across the garden, the bride soft in the foreground with her bouquet.
  • The groom holds the bride from behind by a round window on the veranda, garden leaves in front, in black and white.
  • The groom stands alone on a garden path in his barong, hands in his pockets, looking down and smiling.
  • The bride holds her yellow orchid bouquet against her gown, her sheer veil falling over one arm in the garden.
  • The bride looks down at her yellow orchids, her sheer veil over one shoulder, in the green garden at Tsurumaki Onsen.
  • The bride stands small under her veil at the foot of a bamboo grove in the garden, her train spread on the grass, in black and white.
  • The bride under her veil in the garden at Motoyu Jinya, bamboo and a pink cherry tree rising above her.
  • The bride walks away under her long veil among dark garden trees, a black and white portrait from an onsen wedding in Japan.
  • The bride in her veil and gown stands among the shrubs and maples of the Japanese garden, holding yellow orchids.

The Vows: “Thanks for Showing Up”

The ceremony was in the garden, in black tie, with cello and harp. He walked in with his parents to “Firework”, which his best friend will tell you is his all-time favourite karaoke song. The flower girls and the six sake boys came down the aisle to the theme from Jurassic Park on the harp, which you only choose if you trust your guests to laugh. She walked in with her father to Debussy and Bach.

Her father in a morning coat and white gloves walks the veiled bride towards the ceremony, smiling at her, in black and white.

Their officiant has known him since childhood, and brought a line in Japanese for the occasion: anata no soba ga watashi no okiniiri no basho, together with you is my favourite place to be. Neither of them had written vows. Hers was short: that she loved him, forever. His was the one about showing up.

Then came san-san-kudo, three times three sips of sake, the exchange at the heart of a traditional Japanese wedding. Both fathers poured, and when the third cup came round the guests were invited to drink too. They didn’t only witness the promise. They drank to it.

Rows of white sake cups with blue rings wait on black trays for san san kudo at a Japanese-Filipino wedding ceremony.
Guests hold out small sake cups to share in the toast during the garden ceremony, the couple and officiants behind them.
The bride and groom kiss in front of a tall arrangement of white and yellow flowers at their onsen wedding in Japan.
The groom in his barong laughs as he walks up the aisle between cheering guests after the garden ceremony.
  • A hand-lettered welcome sign hangs from a tree on ribbons above the stepping-stone path and bridge in the garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • A white welcome sign tied to a branch with cream ribbons greets guests to the garden wedding at Jinya in Tsurumaki Onsen.
  • Pale pink hydrangeas, white blooms and sprays of blossom in the ceremony flowers for a garden wedding in Japan.
  • A cellist and a harpist in black tie play in a wooden hall with tatami floors for the wedding ceremony at Motoyu Jinya.
  • A guest in a suit holds a small sake cup and a folded programme on his knee during the garden ceremony.
  • The groom embraces an older woman in an embroidered Filipiniana dress as family smile beside them in the garden.
  • The bride under her veil holds her father's arm on a tree-lined garden path before the ceremony.
  • A woman in an embroidered dress with a jewelled hairpin rests her hand on the groom's shoulder as he waits at the ceremony.
  • Her father smiles as he walks the veiled bride past guests holding up phones in the garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • The bride and her father walk a white aisle between guests under the trees of the garden ceremony.
  • The couple stand before their officiants under white and yellow flowers at a Japanese garden wedding ceremony.
  • The veiled bride faces the groom in his barong as the officiant reads, flowers and garden trees all around.
  • Guests under clear umbrellas watch the couple at the far end of the aisle in the green garden ceremony.
  • The groom drinks from a sake cup during san san kudo while the veiled bride and guests watch in the garden.
  • Guests reach out with small sake cups to share the toast with family during the garden wedding ceremony.
  • The couple's first kiss as husband and wife under the flowers, the officiants laughing beside them.
  • The couple kiss as guests raise their phones and the officiants cheer at a garden wedding in Kanagawa.
  • Flower girls laugh and cheer as the bride passes on her way back down the aisle, in black and white.

They married on the first day of sakura hajimete hiraku, the five days the old calendar names for the cherry blossoms beginning to open. After days of rain, the garden kept its side of the bargain.

The bride and groom stand beneath pink cherry blossom beside raked gravel in the garden at Motoyu Jinya, her train sweeping the stones.
All the wedding guests gather around the couple beneath the Jinya sign in the garden, seen from above.
  • The groom and bride celebrate with guests packed in close behind them, cheering, after the garden ceremony.
  • Guests wave and cheer around the couple for the big group photo after their onsen wedding ceremony in Japan.
  • Two pairs of hands clasped together in close detail, a quiet moment between family at the wedding, in black and white.
  • The couple and both families pose and wave beneath the Jinya sign, the bride's long veil spread across the path.
  • The groom in his barong laughs with an older relative who hugs him close in the garden, in black and white.
  • The bride laughs with her father in his morning coat, her bouquet in her hand, a black and white portrait in the garden.
  • The couple kiss at the foot of stone steps under a tall arch of white, pink and yellow flowers, her train on the path.
  • The groom raises a hand to his brow as the bride smiles up at him among the garden leaves, in black and white.
  • The groom hides his face in laughter as the bride laughs with her mouth open, holding her bouquet, in black and white.
  • An older guest in a barong looks through a large camera with a long lens, photographing the couple in the garden.
  • The groom presses his hands to his face as the bride laughs beside him by the ceremony flowers.
  • The bride and groom with bridesmaids in red, gold and green and groomsmen in barong in the garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • The bride laughs with the groomsmen in barong around her, holding her yellow orchids in the garden.
  • Bridesmaids in red, pink and green carry the bride's long train as she walks along a garden path, smiling.
  • The bride laughs as bridesmaids in red, gold and sage carry her train down a garden path, the welcome sign hanging behind.
  • The bride raises her bouquet with the groom and bridesmaids cheering on a garden path after the ceremony.
  • The bride and her bridesmaids lift white paper parasols high in the garden, dresses in red, sage and gold.
  • The couple share a kiss beneath pink cherry blossom in front of a dark wooden building in the garden at Tsurumaki Onsen.
  • Pink cherry blossom on a dark branch, soft green garden behind, on the day of a spring wedding in Kanagawa.
  • Pink blossom frames the groom's barong and the bride's face as they lean close, yellow orchids just below.
  • The groom in his barong walks with the bride under pink blossom along a stone path in the garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • The bride and groom embrace under a blossoming cherry tree, her long train and veil spread across the stones.
  • The couple hold each other close under pink cherry blossom outside an old wooden building in the garden.
  • The couple walk away along a garden path, her long veil trailing behind, a black and white portrait.
  • The bride and groom walk arm in arm down a tree-lined path through the garden at Motoyu Jinya.
  • A floral installation of hydrangea, orchids and blossom climbs a tree trunk beside the garden steps.
  • Purple allium, pink blossom and yellow orchids in the wedding flowers among the garden greenery.
  • A full arrangement of white and pink hydrangeas, green viburnum and blossom for a garden wedding in Japan.
  • Hydrangeas, orchids and blossom wrap the trunk of a tall tree near the ceremony space in the garden.

Rice by Birth Weight

At the reception the couple stood up with two sacks of rice. “In the Japanese culture,” the groom explained, “there is a tradition that when you get married, you give your parents a sack of rice.” Each sack weighed exactly what one of them had weighed at birth, “so they remember where we came from and what they did to bring us where we are today.”

Taijū-mai, birth-weight rice, is a modern custom rather than an ancient one, a gift Japanese couples have taken to giving their parents as a wedding closes. It made sense on both sides of this family. Few things say home in Japan or in the Philippines as plainly as a pot of rice, and here was the weight of a newborn handed back to the people who once carried it.

Her father’s toast had already said where this was going: everyone in the room, he told them, was already part of the couple’s big happy family. The rice made it official.

The bride hugs a woman in an embroidered Filipiniana dress at the reception, family and guests around them.
A man in a morning coat gives a speech with a microphone as the couple listen from their seats, in black and white.

A Whole Bunch of Fun Afterwards

The brief said traditional and classy first, then a whole bunch of fun, and the reception kept both promises. The bar card set calamansi from the Philippines beside shikuwasa from Okinawa. Flair bartenders worked the bottles. The sake barrel returned, as promised. A same-day edit played across three screens, so guests relived the morning before the night was over.

He stood up near the end and admitted he’s a control freak who doesn’t like surprises. “And today I was definitely swept off my feet,” he said. “Not just by my wife, but by all of you here today.” Then he tied it back to his vows and thanked everyone for showing up. After that it was the dance floor, and his family proved her right.

Afterwards he wrote to us that the wedding we’d planned was “too perfect”. Another note ended with a line we’ve kept close since: “Thank you for absolutely everything, you are magic.”

The reception cocktail menu lists a calamansi margarita and a shikuwasa sour, with pink blossom beside the easel.
Two flair bartenders toss bottles into the air above the bar at a wedding reception in Japan.
Petals of confetti burst over both families as they break open a sake barrel at the wedding reception.
The bride leaps with her arms wide on a dark garden path at night, her gown flying, in black and white.
The bride rests her face against the groom's as they dance close, lights glowing behind them, in black and white.
The bride in a short feathered dress dances with the groom in a crowded room under a chandelier, in black and white.
  • Pink cocktails with mint and red rose petals lined up on the bar during cocktail hour at an onsen wedding in Japan.
  • Chicken meatball skewers turn over a charcoal grill at the cocktail hour, a hand reaching in to turn them.
  • Three pink cocktails with ice, mint leaves and red petals, seen from above on a pale table at the wedding.
  • A signature cocktail board hangs on ribbons from a tree in the garden, listing a yuzu gin and tonic and a sakura mojito.
  • Orange orchids, candles and red and black lacquer boxes set the reception tables at Motoyu Jinya.
  • White noren with a blossom crest hang at the reception entrance beside a tall arrangement of white flowers and yellow orchids.
  • The bride and groom step in through the noren at the reception entrance, laughing, the long tables set with candles before them.
  • The couple make their entrance under the noren as guests raise their phones and cheer, the bride holding yellow orchids.
  • Two bartenders juggle bottles and shakers behind a long bar in a dark wooden hall, in black and white.
  • Flair bartenders throw glowing bottles high above the bar at the wedding reception in a wooden hall.
  • Two bartenders in waistcoats juggle bottles over the cocktail bar at a destination wedding reception in Japan.
  • A bartender in a bow tie garnishes a cocktail beside the long reception tables in the low light of the hall.
  • A row of yellow cocktails topped with white foam bubbles waits on the bar beside a cocktail shaker.
  • The couple listen from their table as a man in a morning coat speaks with a microphone at the reception, in black and white.
  • Confetti falls through the dark as both families break open a sake barrel together at the reception.
  • Both families laugh as petals of confetti fly up from the sake barrel during kagami biraki at the reception.
  • Confetti fills the air over the families gathered at the sake barrel, a black and white frame from the reception.
  • The couple raise wooden masu cups and laugh, lit from behind at the reception, in black and white.
  • Family members pass wooden masu cups along the reception table, smiling, in black and white.
  • A bartender holds a cocktail glass out towards the camera, smiling, a black and white frame from the reception.
  • The bride leans on the groom's shoulder at the reception table, guests and candles around them, in black and white.
  • The bride raises her arms beside a man in a morning coat at the head of the reception tables as guests cheer, in black and white.
  • The bride dances with her arms out on the dark garden path at night, the groom behind her, in black and white.
  • The bride dances among friends with their hands in the air on the dance floor, in black and white.
  • The groom dances in his barong on the floor of the reception hall as family laugh and clap behind him.
  • Her father in his morning coat and a woman in butterfly sleeves dance and laugh together, in black and white.
  • A guest in a barong and a friend dance and laugh on the dance floor at the reception, in black and white.
  • The couple dance in the middle of a ring of guests in a hall under a chandelier, in black and white.
  • The groom holds an older woman in an embroidered dress close on the dance floor under a chandelier, in black and white.
  • The groom in his barong dances under two chandeliers, arms out, guests around him, in black and white.
  • Friends sing and shout together on the dance floor at the wedding reception, a light flaring behind them.
  • Two guests in orange and pale pink dance under a disco ball at the wedding reception in Japan.
  • The bride hugs a friend on the dance floor while another guest dances beside them in the reception hall.
  • The groom in his barong dances with his arm pointing out as friends laugh around him on the dance floor.
  • The groom laughs as the bride throws her arms up, both dancing in the crowd at the reception in Japan.
  • The groom sings into a microphone beside a guest in red as friends dance around them at the reception.
  • The groom lifts the bride in her feathered dress as guests cheer under the chandeliers at the reception.
  • The groom hugs the bride from behind in her short feathered dress on the dance floor, in black and white.
  • The bride in her feathered dress dances with her arm in the air beside a friend in red at the reception.
  • The bride dances with her arm up among friends in a crowded room, the reception lights glowing behind.

What Showing Up Asks

Showing up is easy to promise and costly to do. For this wedding it meant her grandmother, at 92, flying in from New York, and a great-uncle of 93 taking the train from Kyoto on his own. It meant her sisters coming from New York and London, and his family from the Philippines. It meant friends from every stage of two busy lives booking flights to Japan.

We think that’s what a destination wedding really asks of people, and what it gives back. Nobody drifts into a wedding in Tsurumaki on the way home from work. Everyone in that garden had decided, months before, to be there, and the two days at Jinya gave them time to make the trip count. He thanked his wife for showing up, and then he thanked everyone else for the same thing. It was the right vow for the right weekend.

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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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