A Shinto wedding ceremony in Japan looks as old as the cedars around the shrine. Its modern form was shaped by a wedding in 1900.
That May, the Crown Prince who became the Taishō Emperor married before the sacred mirror in the palace sanctuary. The next year, Hibiya Daijingu in Tokyo, now Tokyo Daijingu, rehearsed the rite in a mock wedding, then offered it to the public. According to Jinja Honcho, the Association of Shinto Shrines, it spread across Japan from there.
The heart of it is far older, and it never needed a priest. Couples married at home, sharing sake from three cups before a hanging scroll in the alcove, and in much of Japan that’s how people married until the middle of the last century. The cups were there first.
The short answer: a Shinto wedding ceremony is a religious rite, led by priests, in Japanese, on the shrine’s terms, and many shrines welcome international couples. There are three ways in. The full rite at a shrine. Your own ceremony, then a shrine blessing. Or a garden, ryokan or lakeside ceremony carrying the rituals you love. Here’s how Japan does each, what a shrine asks of you, what it costs, who may photograph it, and how we plan it for couples arriving from far away.
What Happens at a Shinto Wedding Ceremony, Step by Step
A Shinto wedding, shinzen kekkon, is performed before the kami, the deities of a shrine, with the couple’s families beside them. Jinja Honcho gives a model order and notes that every shrine and region differs. With the procession most shrines add, it runs like this:
- Sanshin, the procession. Priests and miko, the shrine maidens, lead the couple across the grounds, often under a red umbrella, with the families behind. Rain doesn’t stop it. The route changes.
- Shubatsu, purification. A priest purifies everyone present before the rite begins.
- The opening bow. Everyone stands with the chief priest, faces the altar and bows once.
- The offerings. Food and sake are set before the kami. The sake you’ll drink comes from here.
- Norito, the prayer. The chief priest reports your marriage to the kami in classical Japanese and prays for your lasting happiness.
- Sankon no gi, the three cups. You share the offered sake in san-san-kudo: three cups, three sips each.
- Seishi, the vows. Read aloud before the altar.
- Tamagushi. Each of you offers a sacred branch, then bows twice, claps twice and bows once.
- Shinzoku-hai, the family cup. Both families drink the sake together, and two households become one.
- The close. The offerings are taken down, everyone bows once more, and the priests lead you out.
Many shrines add rings, gagaku music or a shrine maidens’ dance, each in a place of its own. We explain each step to you and your families before the day, so nothing in the hall arrives as a surprise. Inside, the priests lead.
The rite takes about thirty minutes at Tokyo Daijingu, at Akasaka Hikawa Jinja and at Kyoto’s Shimogamo and Kamigamo shrines. Kamigamo’s own estimate, about two hours at the shrine with the waiting room before and the photographs after, is the truer number to plan a day around.
San-san-kudo: three cups, nine sips
The cups come in three sizes, and they pass in a set order. The groom drinks first from the first cup, the bride first from the second, the groom first again from the third. At some shrines you only touch the cup to your lips the first two times and drain it on the third.
Odd numbers are auspicious in Japan, Jinja Honcho explains, and nine, three taken three times, is the greatest of them. The wish inside it is for a long and happy home. Meiji Jingu puts it more simply: the sips are seen as equal to a vow.
Shinto Wedding Vows and Rings
The vow is the shrine’s own text. At Togo Jinja the groom commonly reads it and the bride adds her name at the end. At Hie Jinja the two of you read it together. Akasaka Hikawa Jinja in Tokyo offers it in English, a pledge to love, believe in and stay faithful to each other for all time.
Words you’ve written yourselves belong to a ceremony of your own, and a shrine blessing can follow, as it did for our couples in Aomori and Tokyo.
Rings came later. Tokyo Daijingu calls the exchange a Western custom, taken up with the times, and shrines place it differently: after the cups at some, after the tamagushi at others, and only if you ask at a few.
The tamagushi offering
A tamagushi is a branch of sakaki, the evergreen of Shinto offerings, tied with white paper. Unlike food offered to the kami, Jinja Honcho notes, this one you take in your own hands. You receive it from the priest, turn it clockwise until its base points toward the altar, lay it down, then bow twice, clap twice and bow once more. It sounds like a lot to remember. It isn’t. The priests show you each step as it comes.
The priests and the shrine maidens
The dance is where shrines differ most, and it’s worth asking about before you choose. Thirteen people serve a wedding at Tokyo Daijingu, priests, miko and musicians, and four miko dance with chrysanthemums to bless the couple’s new start. A second dance, by miko dressed as butterflies, belongs to that shrine alone. At Nogi Jinja, the dance is bugaku: a dragon on a lake, danced to live music.
What Each Shrine Keeps for Itself
Beyond the dance, every shrine keeps something of its own. At Kanda Myojin you write your names on a white stone, so you’ll be bound as firmly as stone, and the shrine keeps it in its inner garden. Akasaka Hikawa has a comb rite drawn from its own myth, in which a god turned the princess he saved into a comb and wore it in his hair into battle. At Izumo Taisha the couple walk around a pillar in the hall, as the first two gods did in Japan’s creation story. Shimogamo adds a cup shared between the couple and both sets of parents.
Who May Attend a Shinto Wedding
Numbers decide the shrine and the hall, so we settle them before anyone books a flight. A shrine wedding was built around two families becoming one, though many shrines now welcome friends too. The halls set the limits: up to 80 guests at Tokyo Daijingu and 84 at Kanda Myojin, 15 on each side at Shimogamo. Akasaka Hikawa will marry a couple alone.
What Is Religious, and What Is Cultural?
The rite at a shrine is religious. The norito reports your marriage to the kami of that place, and the tamagushi is an act of worship.
San-san-kudo is both: the centre of the shrine rite, and older than it, a custom of the household. That’s why we think it can travel, with care, into a ceremony elsewhere.
Kagami biraki has sacred roots. Sake offered at a Shinto rite is shared once the prayers are done, and when it comes in a cask, the lid is opened. Gekkeikan, the Kyoto brewer, explains that the round lid, the kagami or mirror, stands for wholeness and harmony, and opening it spreads good fortune wider.
Our test is simple. Is this a prayer to a shrine’s kami, or a custom families share? Prayer belongs at the shrine. Custom can come to you, if someone explains it properly.
Prayer belongs at the shrine. Custom can come to you, if someone explains it properly.
Can Foreigners Have a Shinto Wedding?
Yes, at many shrines. Shimogamo Jinja in Kyoto says plainly that it marries couples where one partner, or both, isn’t Japanese, and asks for an interpreter if you don’t speak the language. Atsuta Jingu in Nagoya holds weddings for international couples with help in English. Heian Jingu can plan every meeting online. Their conditions are about language and preparation, not faith.
Meiji Jingu’s wedding hall, Meiji Kinenkan, spells out what preparation means in its English rules. The ceremony is entirely in Japanese. You attend a briefing in person before the wedding, even if you live overseas, or the ceremony can’t go ahead. Casual dress can be turned away. That’s a fair request, and it has to be planned for: you’ll need to be in Japan for the briefing, not only for the day.
Before you fall for a photograph, know how it works.
The shrine sets the terms. Its order of rites, its music, its guest numbers and its rules on cameras all differ from one shrine to the next. We agree every one of them well before the day.
The rite is in Japanese. The priest leads. Your part is to follow, listen and take it seriously. Our Japanese team does the asking long before you arrive, and on the day Sumika, in kimono, makes sure the shrine is ready for you and you’re ready for it.
Sacred ground is shared ground. One couple’s ceremony was arranged at a hillside shrine near Mt Fuji. When visitors returned after Japan reopened, the shrine told us it could no longer close the space for anyone. We understood, and so did they. We moved the ceremony to a deck a few minutes from the torii, and the couple found it more private, which mattered to them.
The legal marriage is separate. Under Japan’s Civil Code, a marriage takes effect when it’s registered at a city or ward office, and no ceremony, at a shrine or anywhere else, carries legal weight on its own. Most of our international couples complete the paperwork at home. One couple filed theirs months before at a ward office in Fukuoka, in Japanese dress, with both sets of parents beside them. Their onsen wedding was for everyone else. If you’d like the legal marriage in Japan too, our guide to getting legally married in Japan covers the paperwork.
Can LGBTQ couples have a Shinto wedding?
Some shrines will, and it’s each shrine’s decision. In 2023, Jinja Honcho told the Kobe Shimbun that nothing in Shinto thought affirms or rejects weddings for two brides or two grooms, and left the question to each shrine. That June, Amagasaki Ebisu Jinja in Hyōgo held a Shinto wedding for two grooms, its prayer reworded so that nothing in it assumed a bride and a groom. Its chief priest said Shinto’s eight million kami are full of diversity.
Most of the shrines the newspaper asked weren’t ready to say yes, and Meiji Jingu said it would consider the question with outside experts. So we ask the shrine for you, properly, before a date is set. And the rituals travel well. In Kawagoe, two grooms from Northern Ireland married in a garden under a red tea parasol, with vows they’d written themselves and a bowl of tea where a shrine would have poured sake. The three cups belong in a garden ceremony as surely as in a shrine hall.
What a Shinto Wedding Costs, and When to Book
At well-known shrines in Tokyo and Kyoto, the rite itself costs ¥85K to ¥300K (US$540 to US$1,900), paid as an offering. Shrines call it the hatsuho-ryō, after the first rice of the harvest once offered to the kami. It covers a rite of about thirty minutes and what the shrine provides for it: the priests, the miko, the music, sometimes a room for each family. Many shrines publish the figure.
| Shrine | City | The offering for the rite |
|---|---|---|
| Akasaka Hikawa Jinja | Tokyo | ¥85K (US$540), with gagaku and the family waiting room |
| Nogi Jinja | Tokyo | ¥170K (US$1,080) |
| Shimogamo Jinja | Kyoto | ¥150K (US$950) |
| Kamigamo Jinja | Kyoto | ¥150K or ¥200K (US$950 or US$1,270), by hall |
| Heian Jingu | Kyoto | ¥150K or ¥300K (US$950 or US$1,900), by hall |
| Kitano Tenmangu | Kyoto | ¥150K or ¥300K (US$950 or US$1,900), by hall |
| Yasaka Jinja | Kyoto | ¥150K to ¥250K (US$950 to US$1,580), by hall, with both families’ rooms, an attendant, a guide, service and tax |
| Meiji Jingu | Tokyo | a ceremony-only plan from ¥718K (US$4,550), with attire, dressing and an attendant |
Meiji Jingu sells a plan rather than receiving an offering, so its figure already holds the attire, the dressing and an attendant. At the other shrines on the list, the attire and dressing come on top, along with each shrine’s own options: a dressing room, a dance by the miko, a fee when your dresser comes from outside, a package of attire, dressing and photographs.
The offering is the figure couples find first. It’s rarely the one that shapes the budget.
On average, the kimono costs more than the rite. Some brides from abroad expect a wedding kimono to cost what a yukata rental does in Kyoto’s old streets. A wedding kimono is built in layers, from the under-kimono to the obi and the heavy uchikake over them, and it takes trained dressers to put it on. In our experience, even the simplest, rented and dressed properly, comes to about ¥250K (US$1,580), and our brides spend about ¥500K (US$3,170) on average with their dressers, more than any offering in the table. Hair, photographs, a meal and everyone’s travel sit on top of that, and our guide to what a wedding in Japan costs shows how a whole day adds up.
The most sought-after halls open a year ahead. Hie Jinja takes bookings a year out, Shimogamo about ten months. Kamigamo opens each month’s weddings on the first day of the same month a year before, by phone, first come, first served, and asks you to have a second and third date ready. Our Japanese team makes that call. Heian Jingu’s main hall marries couples on weekdays only, which suits couples flying in: many of ours marry midweek anyway. In November, as Kyoto’s autumn colour arrives, it marries one couple a day. A provisional hold lasts a week to ten days.
So the shrine conversation starts as soon as you have a season. Our Shinto ceremony planning begins there.
What to Wear to a Shinto Wedding
The classic shrine bride wears shiromuku, white from the outer robe to the smallest accessory. Muku means without impurity, and white has long been a sacred colour in Japan, once called the colour of the sun. Over her hair goes a white wataboshi hood, or the tsunokakushi, a narrow band of white silk lined in red, pinned over the traditional bridal hairstyle. Many brides change into an iro-uchikake, the same trailing robe in colour, for the reception, and some choose a hikifurisode, a long-sleeved kimono worn trailing, traditionally black. The groom wears montsuki haori hakama: a black kimono and haori jacket with five family crests, and hakama. It’s Japan’s most formal menswear.
None of it is compulsory everywhere. Meiji Kinenkan’s Gishikiden, the shrine’s own ceremony hall, accepts Japanese or Western dress, and at Meiji Jingu a groom may marry in a morning coat. Our couples have been blessed at smaller shrines in gowns and suits. Kimono takes specialist dressers and time, and our Japanese bridal kimono guide goes deeper.
What guests wear depends on whose wedding it is. At a Japanese couple’s wedding, the women of the family traditionally wear black tomesode kimono, and guests bring goshugi, gift money in a special envelope. At an international couple’s wedding, guests follow the couple’s dress code. At a shrine, dress for a place of worship either way: Meiji Jingu asks that shoulders be covered, and for hats and winter coats to come off in the hall. Our guide to attending a wedding in Japan has the rest.
Who May Photograph a Shinto Wedding?
Couples ask about the light. The question that decides the photographs is who is allowed to take them.
Many of Japan’s best-known shrines allow only their own photographer inside the hall. Tokyo Daijingu, Hie Jinja and Kanda Myojin say so on their wedding pages. At Meiji Jingu, guests may photograph from one seat for each family, and some rites may not be photographed at all. In Kyoto, Kamigamo allows no outside photo or video teams, and at Shimogamo only the shrine’s two partner studios may photograph the rite inside the hall: nobody else, the couple’s own guests included. Meiji Jingu bans drones, and Kasuga Taisha in Nara bans them too, along with wedding photographs in its grounds unless you married there. Akasaka Hikawa Jinja is the open exception: any photographer, photographs during the rite, and the grounds free afterwards.
Every one of these rules grows from what the hall is for. So the shrine you choose decides who records the most important half hour of your day.
A shrine hall is a place of worship, and a wedding there is a prayer before it’s anything else.
It’s one of the first questions we ask, long before a hall is chosen. We ask every shrine for its rules, and we plan inside them. At smaller shrines, by arrangement, the hall can open to us, and the photographs in this guide from Naruko Tenjin, Fuji Omuro Sengen Jinja and Takayama Inari were made that way. At Takayama Inari in Aomori, the priests came with us, and the shrine gave our drone permission to fly. It’s one reason couples often choose a blessing at a shrine that welcomes us, or bring the three cups to a garden.
The Shrine Blessing: A Gentler Way In
Many of our couples who want a shrine don’t marry there. They marry somewhere of their own, in their own words, then go to a shrine to be blessed: a shorter prayer in the hall, still the shrine’s rite, and gentler for anyone meeting Shinto for the first time.
A couple who followed the cherry blossom north to Aomori said their vows under the trees, with a friend leading. That afternoon they went to Takayama Inari Shrine and laid a tamagushi with its base toward the altar. Two deep bows, two claps, one bow. Their marriage was reported to the kami.
A couple from Australia came on a day when Mt Fuji stayed in cloud. Their blessing was at Fuji Omuro Sengen Jinja, which by its own records began in 699 on the mountain’s slopes. Its old hall now stands at the shrine by the lake, moved down in 1974 to keep it safe. A shrine that honours the mountain from below suited a day without the mountain.
At Naruko Tenjin in Nishi-Shinjuku, said to date from 903, the priests walked another couple through the bows, the sake, the prayer and the bell. A blessing asks nothing of an international couple except presence. The priests carry the rest.
Planning a Shrine Day Around Your Guests
A shrine is a working place of worship, not a venue built for guests who’ve flown halfway round the world. Some halls sit at the top of stone steps. The weather is the weather. This is where a wedding planner in Japan earns their keep.
On the day of that Tokyo blessing it was twenty-seven degrees in the shade, and the garden ceremony before it was in full sun. We promised to get everyone into the shade as fast as we could. The answer came straight back: “No, it’s perfect.” Water went round all the same.
Every plan we write for a shrine day is built around the people in it: dietary needs sent ahead to every kitchen, the oldest guests’ travel worked out first, a rain plan for every step outdoors, cars where the walk gets long, and quiet hours so nobody reaches a shrine hall worn out.
Why Japan Has So Many Wedding Chapels
Japan’s National Diet Library traces Christian weddings here to the 1870s, though they only became popular after the war. After the Heisei era began in 1989, the chapel overtook the shrine. Kenji Ishii, a scholar of religion at Kokugakuin University, read the change as two shifts: from what parents and family wanted to what the couple wanted, and from doing what everyone did to doing something of your own. Our couples arrive at the far end of that same shift: a wedding chosen rather than inherited.
Today the two run close. In Recruit’s Marriage Market Survey for 2025, 36 percent of couples who held a ceremony in Japan chose a Christian-style one and 33 percent a Shinto one, and the chapel, here, is far more often a style than a faith. Yet only about one ceremony in sixteen was held at a shrine itself. Most Shinto ceremonies take place in wedding halls and hotels, some of them run by shrines, so a wedding at the shrine, under the cedars, is rarer than the photographs suggest.
A hotel chapel here is a Japanese form in its own right. At the Andaz Tokyo, the chapel stands alone on the 52nd-floor terrace, wrapped in copper. At Rosewood Miyakojima, a round chapel sits at the water’s edge.
Sometimes a chapel is the wrong note. At Eneko Tokyo, a bride felt the courtyard looked too much like one. Low drifts of flowers and a winding aisle turned it into a clearing.
The Third Path: A Garden, Ryokan or Lakeside Ceremony
Japan already has a name for a ceremony with no particular religion, where family and friends are the witnesses: jinzen-shiki, its modern forerunner dating from the late 1950s. Many of the weddings we plan belong here. A garden, a ryokan, a lakeshore or a forest. Your own words, led by someone who knows you. And the Japanese rituals you choose, explained so every guest can take part.
One couple married in a private garden in Kyoto at the peak of autumn. Alongside vows and rings, they asked for a formal sake exchange and a prayer of their own, because faith is part of who they are. The three cups sat beside that prayer without strain. Nothing in it was borrowed for effect. All of it was chosen.
In Kawagoe, a couple from Florida shared the three cups in a dry garden of raked gravel, under a red wagasa, with their friends close enough to reach out and touch. A promise made with the hands as well as the words.
Kagami biraki suits a crowd, and it doesn’t need one. A couple who eloped at Mt Fuji in spring said their vows by Lake Kawaguchi, went to a shrine near the lake for a blessing, and opened a small cask on the shore. Two people, one mallet, both hands on it. A lakeshore needs its own permissions, and our guide to wedding venues in Japan explains what open ground asks of a plan.
Mochi pounding gives a whole room something to do. In rice country such as Miyagi, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture notes, mochi has long been eaten at weddings, its long stretch a wish for long life.
A Temple Wedding in Japan Is Also Possible
A shrine is Shinto, marked by a torii gate. A temple is Buddhist, entered through a sanmon. Buddhist weddings are rarer. Below Mt Fuji, at Taiseki-ji, a temple more than seven centuries old, a couple and their families married among thousands of cherry trees. When the couple had drunk, a priest moved among the guests filling each red cup, so everyone shared the sake.
Shrine, Chapel or Garden: How to Choose
Start with meaning, then the place. Is it the rite you want, or the feeling of being there? If you’re still deciding what kind of wedding you want in Japan, begin with the ten questions we recommend answering before anything is booked, and our Japan Wedding Guide has the rest.
Choose a shrine wedding if Shinto is part of your family or faith, or you want the full rite and are ready to meet it on the shrine’s terms, its rules on photographs included. Plan a year ahead.
Choose your own ceremony and a shrine blessing if you want your own words and a shrine in the day. It’s the path many of our couples take.
Choose a chapel if the hotel is right for the whole stay and a familiar shape matters to your families.
Choose a garden, ryokan or lakeside ceremony if the place is the point, and bring the rituals with you.
Whichever you choose, our wedding planning in Japan asks that question first: where each ritual belongs, who explains it, and how your guests get there rested. Our photography and film work within every shrine’s rules. You hold the cup. We hold the rest.
Quick Answers
Can foreigners have a Shinto wedding in Japan?
Yes, at many shrines. Shimogamo Jinja in Kyoto marries couples where one or both partners aren’t Japanese, and Atsuta Jingu in Nagoya plans weddings for international couples with help in English. The rite is in Japanese, and shrines may ask for an interpreter or, like Meiji Jingu’s wedding hall, a briefing in person before the day. They ask for preparation, not faith.
How long does a Shinto wedding ceremony take?
The rite itself takes about thirty minutes at Tokyo Daijingu, Akasaka Hikawa Jinja, Shimogamo and Kamigamo. With the waiting room before and the family photographs after, Kamigamo reckons on about two hours at the shrine in all. A procession across the grounds adds time at shrines that hold one.
How much does a Shinto wedding cost in Japan?
At well-known shrines in Tokyo and Kyoto, the offering for a Shinto wedding, the hatsuho-ryō, runs from ¥85K (US$540) to ¥300K (US$1,900) for a rite of about thirty minutes. Shrines add their own options. A wedding kimono often costs more than the rite: rented and dressed, from about ¥250K (US$1,580), and about ¥500K (US$3,170) on average for our brides, far beyond a yukata rental. Hair, photographs, a meal and travel come on top.
Is a Shinto wedding legally binding?
No ceremony in Japan is, at a shrine or anywhere else. Under the Civil Code, a marriage takes effect when it’s registered at a city or ward office. Most of our international couples do the legal paperwork at home, and the ceremony in Japan is the celebration everyone travels for.
Can LGBTQ couples have a Shinto wedding in Japan?
Some shrines will. Jinja Honcho, the Association of Shinto Shrines, has said Shinto neither affirms nor rejects weddings for two brides or two grooms, and leaves it to each shrine. In 2023, Amagasaki Ebisu Jinja in Hyōgo held a Shinto wedding for two grooms. Ask the shrine early, and in Japanese.
Can we take photos at a Shinto wedding?
It depends on the shrine. Tokyo Daijingu, Hie Jinja and Kanda Myojin allow only their own photographer in the hall, Meiji Jingu limits guests to one seat for each family, and Kamigamo allows no outside photo or video teams. Akasaka Hikawa Jinja allows any photographer during the rite. Ask before you choose the shrine.
Do couples kiss at a Shinto wedding?
The rite has no kiss in it. No order of rites we’ve read includes one, from Jinja Honcho’s model to the shrines’ own. The promise is spoken in the vows and sealed with sake, and Meiji Jingu describes the three cups as equal to a vow.
What should guests wear to a Shinto wedding?
Dress for a place of worship, and lean formal: Meiji Jingu turns away casual dress and asks that shoulders be covered. At a Japanese couple’s wedding, the women of the family traditionally wear black tomesode kimono. At an international couple’s wedding, guests follow the couple’s dress code. Choose shoes that cope with gravel and stone steps, because the walk to the hall is part of the day.
Can we write our own vows for a shrine wedding?
The shrine rite has its own pledge, read aloud before the altar, and Akasaka Hikawa Jinja in Tokyo offers it in English. If you want words you’ve written yourselves, say them in a ceremony of your own, then take them to a shrine for a blessing, as our couples in Aomori and Tokyo did.
What is san-san-kudo?
The three-cup sake rite at the heart of a Shinto wedding: three cups of different sizes, three sips from each, shared between the couple in a set order. Nine, three taken three times, is the greatest of Japan’s lucky odd numbers, and the wish inside it is for a long and happy home.
Three Small Cups
Japan doesn’t ask you to become Japanese for a day. It asks you to know what you’re taking part in. Get that right, and three small cups will mean as much to you as they have to everyone who has shared them before.
Updated October 2026. Sources: Jinja Honcho, the Association of Shinto Shrines; Kokugakuin University’s Encyclopedia of Shinto; the National Diet Library; the wedding pages of each shrine named, with rules checked in October 2026; Recruit Bridal Research Institute’s Marriage Market Survey 2025; Japan’s Civil Code. Fees and rules change, and we confirm them with each shrine as we plan.
