Affordable I Do’s on Rodeo Drive
On Rodeo Drive, they certainly don’t tie strings of old tin cans behind the newlyweds’ car.
Everything else, though, seems authentically American at the tiny Beverly Hills wedding chapel where Japanese couples come to take the plunge without falling into debt.
The glass-lined chapel in the middle of the Rodeo Collection shopping center is a magnet for couples anxious to avoid the high cost of getting married in Japan.
A Beverly Hills connection is hard to resist for young Japanese lovers who have an ongoing love affair with American pop culture.
The price is hard to resist, too. Instead of shelling out as much as $60,000 on a wedding in Japan and thousands more on a honeymoon, couples who come here can get hitched for as little as $600 at the sanctuary called “The Garden.” Although travel expenses are extra, the trip to California becomes the honeymoon.
Things looked rosier than the bouquets and garlands of artificial blossoms that tastefully line the chapel aisle and altar areas when The Garden opened four years ago above a hair salon.
High costs were sending thousands of Japanese abroad to tie the knot. One church in Hawaii was staging 2,000 weddings a year, holding seven or eight ceremonies a day, six days a week.
But to the dismay of its operators, the marriage of a wedding chapel to an upscale Beverly Hills shopping complex hasn’t gone off without a hitch.
Wedding planners Yoshi Ueda and Satoko Maruta had scarcely finished converting the former art gallery and flower shop into the pew-lined, flower-bedecked sanctuary in the Rodeo Collection’s open-air courtyard when the roof started caving in on Japan’s economy.
Couples in Japan began scaling back their traditional wedding ceremonies--the ones marked with spectacular laser displays, lavish feasts and a spectacle that required brides to change their gowns four times. Instead of renting expensive hotels, some couples took the dramatic step of marrying in places like restaurants. Fewer decided to go abroad for their weddings.
“When we opened we were expecting we’d be doing a wedding a day,” said Ueda, director of Rainbow Weddings, which operates the chapel. “We’ve done about 180 weddings the four years we’ve been open. I don’t think that’s much.”
Spring and autumn are the busy seasons, with five to 10 weddings a month. Only two couples were married there in July.
But Ueda remains optimistic--particularly because the chapel has begun attracting a following among Southern California-based couples.
On Monday, Shugi Komai, 37, and Tomoko Kimura, 32, tied the knot in a midday ceremony that caused shoppers and workmen remodeling a nearby storefront to pause and watch.
Komai is a Japanese-born moving company worker who immigrated to Gardena. The bride, who recently moved from Japan to get married, is attending English language classes.
“My friend told me about this, and I came over to look and decided this was the place,” Komai said, explaining why the couple did not return to Japan for the rites.
A few extras--including a limousine and the rental of his gray pinstriped tuxedo and Kimura’s flowing white gown--upped the cost to about $2,000.
But it was money well spent, decided the couple--whose vows were recorded by two still photographers and a videographer for relatives back in Japan.
There was a brief rehearsal that included a practice run of the exchange of rings before the Rev. Jim Dunsford. He’s an actor (“I started out playing one of the kids on the ‘Mr. Novak’ show”) and a minister with First Church of God the Father.
“I never knew this place was here,” Dunsford said as he pulled on a blue clerical robe trimmed with a bright red stripe.
The traditional “Wedding March” processional was played on a CD player as the couple walked down the aisle. Lighted candles framed the scene as the pair was united in a brief but graceful nondenominational service conducted in English.
The chapel usually relies on two other ministers, Ueda said, and the ceremony is always explained in Japanese to the couples from overseas. Japanese citizens later register the marriages in their hometowns.
Photographer Sean Sepehr said he has recorded more than 30 weddings at the chapel. “I don’t speak Japanese, but I can move the couples around by hand,” he said.
“They’re not used to American poses. But they all want to be photographed in American poses. They have problems kissing for the picture. But they do it.”
Komai and Kimura had no trouble with the kissing part. And they patiently posed for photographs at various places around the Rodeo Collection before climbing into their limousine. They have planned a Hawaii honeymoon.
Ueda said the chapel’s own honeymoon lasted about two years. “The past two years have been nothing--very slow,” he said.
For August, which shapes up as another slow month, he’s willing to discuss discounts with couples, he said.
But don’t sent your wedding-invitation regrets yet to The Garden.
Beverly Hills still is a lure for Japanese who consider it a symbol of romance from films and television shows, Ueda said. Besides, he added: “It’s still very expensive to get married in Japan. You have to invite a lot of people.”
