【每日电讯报】Japan embraces shotgun weddings

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Japan embraces shotgun weddings
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/5602308/Japan-embraces-shotgun-weddings.html

By Julian Ryall in Tokyo Published: 1:39PM BST 22 Jun 2009

Japan's wedding companies are cashing in on the growing number of 'double-happy' celebrations, marking both the marriage and the imminent arrival of the first baby.

The stigma attached to walking down the aisle even very late into a pregnancy is evaporating in Japan, with dekichatta-kon weddings accounting for almost one third of the total.

"Being pregnant on your wedding day had a very bad image a few years ago, but we Japanese have changed our attitude recently," said Masashi Tsubonouchi, of the First Advantage wedding firm.

"We started our 'Mamarriage' packages in 2003 and did around 50 weddings in the first year, but last year we married more than 200 pregnant women," he said.

The change in attitudes towards shotgun weddings can be traced back to the late 1990s, according to a spokesman for another firm, Watabe Wedding. They gained further acceptance as a number of well-known personalities have been pregnant on their wedding day.

The pop star Shizuka Kudo arguably started the trend in 2000 when she married the heartthrob actor and singer Takuya Kimura. The actress Sae Isshiki followed suit in 2002. More recently, the bride of the sumo star Hakuho was pregnant on her wedding day.

A television comedy series has further dragged what was once taboo into the realms of the perfectly acceptable.

"I would say that even 10 years ago, a woman would be ashamed to be pregnant on her wedding day," said Chika Hirotani, of Watabe Wedding. "But now I would say that as much as 20 per cent of our sales are in this sector, which is good for both the wedding industry and Japan's birthrate."

The country is struggling with a rapidly ageing population and a declining birth rate that means that the average Japanese woman will only give birth to 1.25 children in her lifetime, well below the 2.1 required to keep the population level stable.

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Shotgun weddings on rise in Japan as attitudes to pregnancy shift
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6550286.ece

June 22, 2009


Ceremonies for pregnant brides may account for almost a third of the market

Nuptial numbers

— 714,000: number of annual weddings in Japan according to the last census
— £12,000: average amount spent
— 26 and 29: average age of bride and groom
— £127: The cost of hiring a fake wedding guest at an agency in Tokyo. For an extra £64, he or she will give a speech

Sources: 2005 Japanese Population Census, Times database