Kimono Flea Market ICHIROYA's News Letter No544
Hello from Yuka from Ichiroya.
This newsletter is our family report about the wedding we attended this weekend.
Our oldest daughter Shoko got married and moved to Yamanashi prefecture, which is at the foot of Mt Fuji. Masanori is her husband and his sister Yui got married. We were invited to the wedding ceremony and the reception held in Kaneyamaen Hotel there.
hotel rooms:http://www.kaneyamaen.com/room/
The hotel is famous for its huge garden and the spa. Inside of the hotel is like a small old Japanese town-each room and the corner of the hallway are neatly decorated with Ikebana, flower arrangement.(If you visit Mt Fuji, we recommend this hotel).
The photo shows the typical formal kimono. Mugi(our younger daughter, who is single) is wearing furisode. You can see the long sleeves. Furisode is the most formal kimono for single women. Mugi wore this furisode at Seijin shiki(Coming-of-age ceremony) for the first time. She wore this furisode on Shoko's wedding and also her friends' wedding too, so she wore this furisode probably about 7-8 times. She is wearing furisode more times than average women, I think. Usually there is not much occasion excpet Coming-of-Age ceremony and family memebers' wedding.
Shoko is wearing Kurotomesode, black formal kimono. She got married two years ago and this time, she is wearing formal kimono for married women for the first time. Kurotomesode is formal but can be worn at quite limited occasion, such as attending wedding of relatives or ceremony of conferment(which will be very rare!). Attending friend's wedding, kurotomesode will not be appropriate, it is too formal. Kurotomesode are only for relatives at weddings. It used to be, match maker (go-between, Nakodo) wear kurotomesode but having go-between seems to become perishing.
For our generation, we had to ask someone to act as go-between in the wedding. Usually we `had to' ask boss to act as go-between, It used to be a tradition but recently wedding seems to work without this system,
Ichiro chose this kurotomesode for Shoko. She is still young and married only for two years, so we thought kurotomesode with big patterned part is good. For older women, less patterned kurotomesode is said to be good. She is wearing fukuro obi with gold color(decorative woven patterns with silver or gold color thread is matched with kurotomeso usually). White obiage sash and obijime tie are matched, I could not take close up photos but the color has embroideries with white threads. The mothers of bride and bridegroom, and married women of close relatives were all wearing kurotomesode.
I am wearing houmongi, with Mt Fuji and one of the lake around the mountain and white tsubaki(camellia). I heard this kind of tsubaki can be seen in May and June around Yamanashi area. I wore pale color obiage sash, gold obijime tie. I wore comb with grapes decoration because Yamanashi is famous for grapes!
Yui(bride) wore wedding dress for ceremony, and then entered in green furisode to the reception, and then changed to red frilly dress, so the attendants could see three very diffrent fashion! In the past, sometimes brides changed costumes more times - they had to be away for a long time for changing! Hadekon(big wedding) are not so popular but depending on area, such as Yamanashi, still big weddings seem main stream.
For us, it was a nice short trip to see Shoko and also our mago(granddaughter Ichino). Ichino became tired watching us getting ready and fall asleep! She is a sleep on futon!
As a mother, seeing Shoko in Kurotomesode was quite special, I mean she really is now a wife and the member of Horiike(Shoko's husband)family.
We enjoyed the reunion!(Shoko, Mugi and you can see little Ichino with red ribbons).
Shoko and Mugi seemed enjoying chatting before the wedding.
Ichiro was not paying attention to bride and bridegroom, he was like this:
We hope you enjoy the report---we hope to show the photo of bride and bridegroom too later.
