"A guy came in by himself and was looking around everywhere and asking some really detailed questions about weddings, but became rather vague when we asked about his wife to be," a wedding planner in Chiba Prefecture tells Shukan Bunshun (11/1). "I finally built up the courage to ask him directly if she'd be involved in the wedding planning and that's when he told us that he wanted to marry the girl working the register at his local convenience store, but he hadn't actually plucked up the courage to ever talk to her before."
Weddings can be a real headache, with all the planning and preparations involved. But that doesn't mean there can't be laughs, either, as some wedding planners tell the prestigious weekly. And men who've never talked to women they plan to wed are only the start of it.
"We had one guy come in and introduce his 'wife,' " another marriage planner says. "She was a life-sized doll from his favorite anime."
It's not just the blokes, though.
"One office lady in her 30s paid the deposit for a marriage, then told us that her fiancee was posted overseas and he wouldn't actually be there in person on the big day," a wedding organizer from an Aichi Prefecture hotel says. "Preparations went ahead and we had all the clothes fixed up and the seating order done when we got a call from the woman's mother canceling the event and saying that her daughter was crazy. She had an unrequited love for this guy and was simply fulfilling her fantasy of spending her money on their wedding."
And even the in-betweens can be behind wedding woes.
"It's really hard for us to deal with this person who comes in and is clearly a cross-dresser," a Tokyo hotel wedding organizer tells Shukan Bunshun. "They're pretty common within the industry. They come in and gaze at the places where the weddings are held and get done up in wedding dresses and stuff. They have these dreamy looks in their eyes and are far more bedazzled than even the most eager of brides."
Marriage numbers were up last year in Japan for the first time in 5 years, with 73,973 couples tying the knot. But the average age of those marrying for the first time has risen, reaching 30 in men and 28.2 in women. And the age gets even higher when the wedding is not the first, as a Shizuoka Prefecture wedding planner found out in the case of a man who grew up under a single mother who wasn't particularly taken by his choice of wife. The mother sat through the ceremony with a filthy look on her face from go to whoa, then broke down in front of organizers when it was all over.
"She was bawling her eyes out and screamed, 'I didn't bust my guts bringing him up alone only for him to get married to a woman like this.' Considering her son had married a woman 21 years his senior and with two kids of her own from a first marriage, it wasn't difficult to understand how the mother felt, but after her outburst there was an icy chill that swept through the air in what had up until then been a rather pleasant atmosphere," the marriage planner says.
Sometimes, though, it's the parents who have to cop it sweet, like the case of a marriage that occurred in a Kanagawa Prefecture hotel. Planners knew there was trouble when the bride pulled out a letter most assumed would be written to thank her parents, as is commonly the case, but instead saw the newlywed start off by reading the words "I really hated my domineering mother." The seething message continued until she finished by saying "I'm so glad I've finally escaped the clutches of this family controlled by my mother. I'm going to build a family totally opposite to the one she did. Farewell forever!"
"Well, did that put a dampener on things," the wedding's planner tells Shukan Bunshun. "All that was left at the wedding after that was an awful after-taste."
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