Fewer Japanese marrying in Islands
By David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer
About 7,000 fewer Japanese couples married in Hawai'i last year than the year before, inflicting damage on a tourism niche that has grown to become a major player in the state's economy in recent years.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Watabe Wedding Corp., Japan's largest organizer of overseas weddings, said in its annual report that 25,916 Japanese couples were wed in the Islands last year, or 21 percent below the 32,756 who tied the knot in 2000.
Hiroki Harada helps fiancee Tomomi Nagamachi find the perfect wedding dress at the Matzki Wedding Emporium. Harada and Nagamachi are getting married tomorrow. The average Japanese couple will spend about $3,500 on a wedding ceremony in the Islands and several thousands more on additional expenses during their stay.
"From September to January, we were in a tough situation," said Naoto Kitawaki, the general manager of Watabe's Hawai'i office. "We did what we could."
Watabe, with a Hawai'i work force of about 230 before Sept. 11, had to lay off more than 50 people and cut hours for others, Kitawaki said.
"We may not hire back all of the laid-off employees," Kitawaki said. "Each person is doing more work."
Meanwhile, Hawai'i's share of the Japanese overseas wedding market has been dropping — from 59 percent in 1998, to just 51 percent last year. Guam and Saipan have been gaining share because they are closer and cheaper than Hawai'i.
And the impact of the drop hasn't been limited to wedding companies.
The average Japanese couple spends about $3,500 on a wedding ceremony in the Islands and several thousand more on hotel, airfare, meals, shopping and transportation. In addition to that, most of the couples bring, on average, eight family members or friends with them, lifting the total of wedding-related visitors to more than 300,000 in 2000, according to Watabe.
"A common trend among wedding parties is for guests, such as parents and family members, to go on an excursion after the wedding, leaving the newlyweds to spend their honeymoon alone," said the Travel Journal International, a Japanese trade publication.
Companies serving Japanese couples report an improvement in the number of bookings so far this year.
Watabe had about 10 percent fewer weddings in April than a year ago and expects to be back to year-earlier levels in July, Kitawaki said. Still his goal is return to the record numbers that came in 2000. That year was helped by many couples wanting to marry in the millennium.
The number of Japanese couples choosing to marry overseas has grown from 11,000, or 1.55 percent of all weddings, in 1989 to a record 57,953, or 7 percent of total weddings, in 2000, according to the Watabe report.
Overseas weddings are attractive because they are often cheaper than weddings in Japan, which traditionally include a formal dinner for a hundred or more guests at a hotel ballroom. The average wedding in Japan costs $23,000, according to Travel Journal International.
