22/08/2026
There are some things you can admire from a distance and others you can only begin to understand when you experience them yourself.
Working with .toyama Kotobuki Weddings in Toyama taught me that a Japanese wedding kimono is never simply something beautiful to wear.
From the way each layer is placed, to how it is tied, adjusted and carried on the body, there is history behind the process. There is etiquette. There is symbolism. And perhaps most importantly, there are generations of knowledge held in the hands of the people who continue to practise this craft.
It reminded me so much of the Chinese Qun Kwa 褂.
They are completely different traditions, yet I find something deeply familiar between them.
Neither is simply a “traditional wedding outfit”. Both carry the stories of the cultures they come from. The motifs have meaning. The craftsmanship matters. How they are worn matters. And behind what the bride eventually sees in the mirror is an enormous amount of knowledge that can so easily be overlooked.
Perhaps because I have spent years learning about Qun Kwa and Chinese wedding traditions, experiencing Japanese bridal dressing made me even more curious. I found myself asking question after question like Why is this done this way? What does this piece mean? Why this order? What has changed, and what has remained?
And every answer gave me another little piece of Japan to understand.
This is why working internationally means so much to me. I don’t want to simply bring weddings to another country. I want to understand the culture that I am stepping into, its history, its people, its rules and the reasons behind them.
My heartfelt thank you to Kotobuki Weddings for being such an important part of our Toyama project, and for sharing your knowledge so generously with me and my team.
Your role went far beyond providing beautiful wedding attire. You helped us understand how it should be worn, respected and represented and that distinction is incredibly important to me.
The more cultures I work with, the more I realise how much there still is to learn.
