Every spring, Japan’s weather agency sends someone to stand in front of a single tree.
It’s a cherry tree in the grounds of a shrine in central Tokyo, and when five or six of its flowers open, the season is officially declared. In 2023 the announcement came on 14 March, ten days earlier than usual, equal to the earliest date since records began in 1953. A week later the city was in full bloom.
That spring, a couple from Los Angeles were planning their first trip to Japan together, with cherry blossom engagement photos in Tokyo at the heart of it. He’d written to us that winter, through Instagram. “Being around the cherry blossom is my bucket list,” he wrote, “and I would love to share that with my fiancé.”
Cherry Blossom Engagement Photos in Tokyo, Built Around Two Ideas
He was a photographer himself, working in Los Angeles. He’d been in the audience at a photographers’ conference in Las Vegas where we were speaking, and he’d decided then that when his own time came, he’d come and find us. So his mind was made up before he ever wrote. “We are certain we would like to have your service regardless,” he said. The only question was how long.
A photographer sees everything: the light, the timing, the small decisions nobody else notices. Choosing someone else to make your own photographs means switching all of that off for a day and simply being in the picture. His last message to us suggests he managed it.
He knew what he wanted the photographs to hold, and it was two things at once: “to showcase us in the city of Tokyo as well as have our pre-wedding shoot during the cherry blossom.” The softness of spring and the energy of the city. Not one or the other.
They made a mood board. They thought hard about their looks. She asked Dee to find her a nail artist in Tokyo as well as hair and makeup, and Dee did. “Since this will be our first time together in Japan,” he wrote, “I would like to capture as much as possible.”
Cherry Blossom in a Tokyo Garden
We started early, in a Tokyo garden, before the crowds that come with full bloom. We went in by a quieter gate.
The forecast had promised rain, and he’d asked, sensibly, whether there was a backup plan. Dee’s answer was simple: “the blossoms are still lovely in the rain.”
In the end the rain held off, and the blossom was still out over the paths.
The garden doesn’t allow wedding attire, so this part was a nod to it rather than the real thing: a long white dress instead of the gown, and a light grey suit. It didn’t matter. It was the bucket list, and he was standing in it with her.
Shinjuku’s Back Streets
Then jeans and T-shirts, and out into Shinjuku. He’d asked for the city as much as the blossom, and the back streets gave him the version of Tokyo people actually live in, a few minutes from the busiest station in the world.
Tokyo Station and Marunouchi
The last change was into their formal look, and the last setting was Tokyo Station: the red-brick station front and the wide, quiet avenues of Marunouchi around it. Spring at the start of the day, the city in the middle, and something more formal to finish. That was the shape he’d asked for from the very first email.
What He Remembers
Afterwards he wrote to say how much they’d enjoyed it. Then he added a line we’ve kept in our hearts.
After all the planning, the mood board, the looks, the crowds and the forecast, all he remembers, he wrote, is how beautiful she looked.
