Getting Married in Japan: Wedding Fairs

Now that you have proposed, gotten the all important parental OK, and started your search for wedding venues you can start experiencing "wedding fairs" (ウェディングフェア also known as "bridal fairs" ブライダルフェア) at your top venues.

However, since wedding places are all inclusive (meaning they handle everything from the service to the cake), the concept of a wedding fair is very different compared to the big convention types found in North America.

Individual Wedding Fairs
 Most wedding halls are run by fairly large corporations, each of which host their own wedding fair events. Generally speaking, these are held during the week when people aren't getting married and the staff is free to show you around.

At least you get good food!

An individual wedding fair generally consists of a representative showing you around the property followed by tours of the chapel and reception rooms. Many places also offer a free food sampling (usually of their highest quality dishes), so if you do a lot of wedding fairs, expect to be well fed. However, after the tour and tasting, expect to get a high pressure sales pitch. Many places will even give you an estimate of how much your dream wedding might cost. If you have a lot of places in mind, make sure to leave an appropriate amount of time in your schedule to compare a variety of different wedding places.

Most places require a reservation in advance and only run events on specific days. As we mentioned in a previous article, wedding places can be easily found on a bunch of different web sites so that is a good place to start inquiring. Some sites like Zexy even allow you to make reservations online without picking up the phone.

Large Wedding Fairs
On rare occasions, a group of companies will get together at a large venue and host a big wedding fair where you can see a whole bunch of places all at once. However, these are rather rare and only held once or twice a years in big cities or popular wedding destinations, so don't count on having one in your area. 

Furthermore, you don't get to see the actual wedding place or try their food, so expect to have to attend another individual wedding fair even after attending a large event.


Have any other wedding related info to share? If so, let us know!