A marriage maestro wed to innovation: Masahiro Hirose has successfully customized nuptials to revive the wedding industry

Japan, Inc., Jan, 2005 by John Dodd

The quintessential teitaku wedding involves a garden ceremony, dinner inside, then a return to the garden for dessert and drinks--all, of course, in the middle of downtown Tokyo. Hirose says that about 70 percent of these weddings have between 150 and 160 guests, with some of the more extravagant ones running to 250 people. A typical teitaku wedding runs the bride's father around 3 to 4 million yen, but since it is tradition for guests to give gifts of money the overall cost is halved.

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Business being what it is, Hirose needs to keep innovating, and his latest spin is a concept called "park weddings." Again, looking to the West for inspiration, Hirose reckons that in Western Europe and the U.S. up to 40 percent of weddings are now being held in parks and other open spaces. He was especially inspired by weddings in Central Park in New York City. Certainly this is the case in areas with clement weather, including California, Hawaii, and the U.S. southwest. Now Hirose wants to bring park weddings to Japan--but not just any park. Given that he has been moving up the value chain, with the teitaku productions at brand-name hotels, his plan is to focus on downtown parks and public spaces. What especially caught his eye was the Tokyo City government's decision to rent out Hibiya Park for events. Hirose was the first to approach the government with a wedding concept. They liked it, and awarded him the rights to conduct weddings during FY2005, beginning April 2005.

Anniversary Weddings

However, the contract is both a blessing and burden. To start with, he only has six months to create a new trend. While he is confident that his recent marketing and PR efforts will generate business leads, he is hedging his bets with another concept--the "anniversary wedding." The idea is for Japanese older couples to have a Western-style wedding decades after their first one, which may have been cut price.

The great thing about these re-weddings is that they can be a lot more casual and are more for the re-bride to enjoy wearing white and getting together with her friends in a festive atmosphere; thus they are ideally suited for a pavilion in a park. Furthermore, it is acceptable for two or three couples to re-tie the knot at the same wedding, thus reducing costs and adding to the festive atmosphere. Hirose is trying to get multiple generations of families to re-wed all together: that is, the grandparents, the parents, and the first-time groom and bride.

Actually, Hirose is making good progress in marketing the "anniversary wedding" concept. "What, with all the divorce and difficulties married couples have these days," he says, "it's really tough on the kids. I want to promote the anniversary weddings as a means for couples to renew their marriage vows in front of their families and friends, and to renew their relationships. I think people will start to realize that as a social institution, marriage needs to be reaffirmed in a social setting. These events will help stressed married couples to remind themselves what their real values should be." That's a good pitch. "And considering that there could be silver, gold, and diamond anniversary celebrations, he may have just tripled the size of the Japanese wedding market.