Holding a Budget-Friendly Wedding Reception in Japan
Have you been planning to get married in Japan and celebrate with friends but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg? Don’t know where to start and how to plan it especially if you are both foreigners without family to help out? Here is how my husband and I planned a simple wedding reception at the peak of COVID-19 in 2021.
My husband and I got married at the City Hall in March 2021 during the height of the pandemic when borders around the world were still closed, flights were limited to a handful in a week and people had to wear masks constantly and keep a significant distance from each other. We knew it was not going to be easy to organize an event like this especially because we both have never done so, let alone in a foreign country but we persevered! I have always wanted the traditional style wedding with a whole entourage and our families in attendance, but then, we knew we had to make the best of what we could at that time. The date we decided on for our celebration was December 2021 because a lot of friends were available at that time.
Before the Wedding
Finding Venues
It is no secret that it can be quite expensive to rent wedding venues in Japan. A typical wedding venue can range from ¥300,000 to ¥1 million and we simply did not want to splurge that much for one day. We looked around for multifunctional venues hoping we could find one that would suit our budget and luckily, our local municipality had one that cost us less than ¥10,000 to rent! It was a beautiful location with Japanese-style changing rooms, a kitchen a large function room where we held both our vow exchange and our reception.
Budget: Around ¥10,000
All About the Outfits
I was your typical starry-eyed girl who had a dream wedding; a ball gown like Cinderella with exquisite glass slippers as I walked down the aisle. I had always dreamed of wearing something extravagantly beautiful on my wedding day… But that was not the reality we were living in at that moment and we had to be practical in terms of the gown and suit we were going to wear for the event. I mostly shopped on Amazon and other online stores for shoes and for the wedding dress I wore along with other accessories like my jewelry, veil, and flower crown. My husband, on the other hand, had his suit tailor-made a month before our wedding in a local shop near our area that specialized in men’s formal wear.
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Budget: Around ¥50,000
Makeup/Hair Dressing
This was a painstaking endeavor for us as it was very difficult to find stylists who were willing to go to the site and some hesitated due to how early we needed them for the event. Fortunately, we found one nice lady who did makeup and hairdressing a few stations away, and she did a fantastic job as I opted for wavy hair extensions and a light, no-makeup look for the wedding.
Budget: Around ¥20,000
Decorations
Since the venue we rented did not have anything that would be fit for a small and simple wedding reception, we planned ahead of time and shopped around for balloons, decorative flowers, a red carpet, lanterns, string lights, and more to make the event as magical as we could
despite our limited budget and capabilities. We also bought centerpieces and some cute items since we knew we did not have the luxury of having the input of a wedding planner, we had to be hands-on and even got most of our stuff from Daiso and other affordable shops.
Budget: Around ¥40,000
Photographer
The photographer was most likely one of the hardest for us to find as we knew that we would need to shell out a significant amount of money if we wanted to get a professional photographer to capture our memorable but ephemeral moments. We knew how exorbitant it would be so we asked around and found out that my old coworker moonlights as a photographer for engagements and other party functions but that our wedding would be the first time he would be covering a wedding as both the photographer and videographer. We were grateful and his photos, as well as the wedding video, turned out wonderful.
Budget: Around ¥100,000
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