There was a period, not that long ago, when we genuinely believed the work was over.
Not slowing down. Over. The kind of over where you sit in your apartment in Tokyo during a global lockdown and try to imagine a version of the future where people fly across the world to get married. Events. Gatherings. International travel. Destination anything. Every pillar our business stood on had been removed at once, and the ground underneath wasn’t coming back on any timeline anyone could predict.
We didn’t talk about it publicly. That felt wrong. Other people were dealing with far worse. Healthcare workers, people losing family members, entire communities in crisis. Our situation was significant to us, but we understood the scale of it relative to what others were carrying. So we kept quiet, kept planning for a future we couldn’t see, and kept showing up for the work even when there wasn’t any.
That period changed us. Not in the broad, inspirational way people sometimes describe difficult chapters. In a very specific way. It made us understand, with complete clarity, what our business actually is when you strip everything else away.
What the Silence Taught Us
When the weddings stopped, we had time. An uncomfortable amount of it. And we did something with it that ended up reshaping everything that came after.
We travelled. Not for work. Just to be in places we’d been too busy to explore properly. Rural Japan opened up in a way it hadn’t before. Venues and ryokan and spaces that had always been closed to outside events started having different conversations. Doors that had been firmly shut for years began to open, because the economic reality had shifted, and because we were there, in person, asking respectfully and consistently.
That’s not something you can replicate from overseas. It required being here. Living here. Speaking the language of patience and relationship that Japan operates on, especially in rural and traditional communities. Some of the most extraordinary venues we work with today exist in our world because of that period. Because we were here when nobody else was coming.
The other thing that happened during the silence was clarity about who actually cared. The wedding industry, globally, is full of people who show up when things are good. The ones who showed up during the pandemic, who checked in, who shared resources, who collaborated without any commercial upside, those relationships became the foundation of how we work with other professionals now. It was a filter. An involuntary one, but a powerful one.
The Other Side
And then the world opened again. Slowly, then all at once.
Japan reopened. International couples started reaching out. Not a trickle. A wave. And the wave hasn’t stopped. If anything, it’s intensified. Japan as a wedding destination has moved from niche interest to genuine demand, and the couples finding us now are often the ones who spent those locked-down years researching, imagining, saving, and deciding that when they could finally travel again, they wanted to do something that mattered deeply to them.
These are not casual inquiries. These are people who’ve spent a long time thinking about what they want their wedding to feel like. They’ve looked at a lot of options. They’ve compared. And by the time they reach out to us, something specific about how we work has resonated with them. They’re drawn to the integration of planning, photography, and film. Or to the way we talk about Japan as a living part of the experience. Or to the fact that we clearly care about the emotional architecture of a day, not just the logistics.
We’re grateful for every single one of them. Genuinely. After a period where we wondered if anyone would ever book a destination wedding again, the idea of having more interest than we can accommodate feels surreal. It’s the kind of problem you promise yourself you’ll never complain about if you’re lucky enough to have it.
The Question
But here it is. The question that keeps coming back, usually late at night, usually after a week where we’ve had to pass on a couple we would have loved to work with.
Do we grow?
Do we bring on more team members, expand the operation, take on more weddings per season, and build a version of 37 Frames that can serve more couples? There’s a logical case for it. The demand is there. The reputation supports it. The venues and vendor relationships are deep enough to sustain a larger volume. On paper, it makes sense.
Or do we stay exactly where we are? Small. Intentional. Personally involved in every single wedding we take on. Knowing every couple’s names, their story, their family dynamics, their anxieties, their taste, their humour. Being the people who actually show up on the day, not a team lead who delegates the experience to someone the couple has never met.
This is not a new question for small businesses. It’s probably the oldest question there is. And the answer is never as clean as the business books make it sound.
What We’re Actually Protecting
The thing people don’t always see from the outside is what gets lost in the scaling. It’s not quality, exactly. Good people can be trained. Systems can be built. Standards can be maintained at a larger size. Plenty of businesses do it well.
What changes is the texture of the relationship. The thing where a couple sends us a message at 11pm because they’re anxious about their ceremony and we respond because we know them well enough to hear the worry underneath the words. The thing where we suggest a venue change three months out because we’ve noticed something in the way they talk about their day that tells us the original plan isn’t quite right. The thing where the photographer, the planner, and the filmmaker are all the same team, with the same history, reading the same room on the day.
That’s not a system. That’s a relationship. And relationships don’t scale the way revenue does.
We’ve watched other studios grow. Some of them brilliantly. We respect the ones who’ve managed to expand without losing their identity. But we’ve also watched studios become brands that feel different from the inside. Where the founders become managers. Where the work becomes oversight. Where the thing that made the studio special in the first place gets distributed across enough people that it thins out, slowly, until one day the Instagram still looks right but the experience behind it has shifted.
We’re not saying that’s inevitable. We’re saying we think about it constantly.
The Couples We Can’t Take
This is the part that’s genuinely difficult. Saying no to people who feel like your people.
Not the price-shoppers. Those conversations are short and clear and nobody’s feelings get hurt. They want something different from what we offer, and that’s completely fine. The market is full of good options at every price point.
The hard ones are the couples who get it. Who’ve read the blog, watched the films, looked through the galleries, and written an inquiry that makes you want to clear the calendar and start planning immediately. And the dates don’t work. Or the season is full. Or the timing just doesn’t line up with what we can genuinely give them without stretching the team past the point where the work stays honest.
Those emails are the ones that sit with us. Because every one of them is a wedding we would have loved. A story we would have cared about. A set of photographs that would have meant something to everyone involved.
We pass them along to people we trust. And we hope the experience they end up having is as good as the one we would have built. But it’s a loss every time. A small one, but a real one.
Where We’ve Landed (For Now)
We haven’t made a permanent decision. We’re not sure a permanent decision is the right move. What we’ve done is get very clear about a few things.
First, we won’t grow for growth’s sake. If the business expands, it’ll be because we’ve found people whose instincts, standards, and emotional intelligence match what this work demands. Not to fill a capacity gap. To genuinely extend what 37 Frames means into more hands without diluting it.
Second, we’d rather say no with honesty than say yes with compromise. A couple deserves to know that the team working on their wedding is fully present, fully invested, and not stretched across too many commitments. If we can’t offer that, we shouldn’t take the booking.
And third, we never forget where this came from. A pandemic that nearly ended everything. A period of silence that clarified what we care about. And a recovery that brought more people to our door than we ever imagined.
We don’t take that lightly. Not for a second.
The Honest Truth
The wedding industry doesn’t talk about this much. The narrative is always growth. More bookings, more revenue, more reach, more followers, more content, more everything. And for some businesses, that’s the right path.
For us, the question has never been how big can this get. It’s been how good can this stay. Those two things aren’t always compatible, and pretending they are doesn’t help anyone.
So here we are. Spring has just started. The diary is full of couples we’re genuinely excited about. The team is doing the work they love. Story, cinema, light, people, Japan. All of it.
And the question is still there. Quietly. In the background. The way it probably always will be.
We’ll keep sitting with it. And we’ll keep choosing carefully. Because the work matters too much to do any other way.
