My modestly-sized, slender Japanese wedding

Greetings;

When I last left this blog, I was about to leave my house to get married. Then there was a two month break in which I didn't write anything. Never fear, I didn't resort to my backup plan and escape to Pakistan. Tsuna and I got married on the 8th of March, 2008 with only minimal screw-ups on my part.

After two months, the events of the day have blurred together into a motley of camera flashes and 'kampaiis.' I will try and put things in order as best I can.

My best man and I arrived two hours early to get prepared in our suit and wedding kimono/hakama respectively. Tsuna had gotten there much earlier for make-up and hair styling, although she had barely gotten any sleep the night previously. While the guest were getting reading downstairs in the lobby, we had our official wedding photos taken in the photo studio. They came out nicely, but Les was taking some photos at the time and I prefer his, to be honest. I'll be putting some up on the blog after this post.

The time came for Tsuna and I to make our grand entrance at the shrine. The guests were lined up long both sides, most of them taking photos. By the end of the day, I was going to get really, really sick of photography in general, but we'll get to that later. Tsuna and I entered the shrine first and took our seats in the middle. As everyone else filed in behind us, I started to sweat profusely. The pre-marriage jitters had finally begun, but by then it was too late to spray on an extra layer of deodorant.

The ceremony involved a lot of bowing, and each time I leaned forward I felt pretty faint and dehydrated. We had practiced the wedding ceremony just the day previously, so I knew what to expect. What I hadn't anticipated was that my phone can turn itself on if an alarm is active, which is what it did when we were offering fern leaves at the altar. I had left my phone (which I had turned off) with Les, but he didn't know it was mine that was ringing. Luckily, that was the biggest Snafu that occurred during the ceremony. The rings were exchanged, the sake was drunk and we were finally married. However,when the ceremony was over I felt pretty dehydrated and was surprised there wasn't a small puddle of sweat at my feet. :-)

After a brief respite, the wedding reception began. We had raided both of our music collections for the wedding soundtrack, but I figured that techno or Dragonforce would not be appropriate for the occasion. This limited my possible songlist from 2000 songs down to... well, two. I had bought a lot of songs on iTunes before the wedding, and was able to get some crypto-geek classics into the final soundtrack, such as "Still Alive" from Portal and lots of the End of Evangelion soundtrack.

The speeches went well, and my mate Susumu did a superb job of translating everything from Japanese into English and vice-versa. On my side, my best man Les, my kendo teacher and friend Mr Ishigawa and my father gave a speech. On Tsuna's side, her father, her aunt and two of her friends gave speeches too. Tsuna's aunt sang some songs for the wedding and Mr Ishigawa performed a Japanese sword dance. Tsuna's college friend Miki served as the bilingual MC, and did a very hard job well. Finally, my Japanese teacher Tomo took care of translating things for my parents.

We put a lot of effort into choosing the menu for the wedding, but we didn't have a chance to eat much of it. We spent most of our time talking to guests rather than enjoying the food or drinking. My advice for all those who are yet to get married- bring doggie bags to your wedding :-)

The reception seemed a lot quicker than the ceremony, although it was actually two hours longer. When the time came to leave, we waited out the front and handed out small gifts to all the guests (most of whom had given us some pocket money earlier). This is when we were swamped by photographers. Tsuna and I were stuck in place for a long time as flash after flash went off. By the end, my mouth was physically hurting from all the smiling. If you look at some of the later photos, no matter how happy I looked, I was dreaming of murdering the CEO of Canon, Olympus and Pentax.

All that was two months ago. Tsuna and I are now living together in Toyota, and I have to say that we're enjoying married life a lot more than the time we were dating or engaged ^_^

-Blake