Japanese wedding

To be honest I am not a huge fan of weddings. I think that often the huge amount of money spent could be used to help start a really wonderful life rather than on just a few hours... but I won't get into that! On Saturday I went to a friend's wedding and actually enjoyed it. It was a couple who had met through an outdoor education training program that I ran a long time ago and there were enough people there that I knew to keep me entertained during all the dress changes etc.
For anyone not familiar with Japanese wedding ceremonies they all generally proceed in the same way - first they have a ceremony in a chapel - in a traditional white wedding dress. These friends included their families in the ceremony by getting the two fathers to get up early in the morning to go to a sacred place, get bottles of water which they brought back and combined in the ceremony and then the couple drank to symbolise the joining of the two families.
After the chapel comes the reception where food, drink and speeches start the ceremony. In general there are usually only a few friends and mainly only relatives and work related people at the reception, but it was great to see lots and lots of friends at this one. The bride usually changes at least twice during the two hour
reception and therefore has very little time to sit down and actually enjoy it, but at this wedding she only changed once and therefore could at least sit down for a few minutes to enjoy the speeches, videos and skits by friends.
The highlight for me was definitely the cake. As you can see they chose a climbing wall with the bride belaying the groom up the wall!