Japanese Wedding

Randy's hygienist at his clinic got married in March, just before we flew to the States. She's an Okinawan native and married our American optometrist, so they had an American-Japanese wedding. The actual wedding ceremony took place earlier that day but we got to see clips of it on their wedding video (similar to American wedding videos but lots of bright pink kanjii subtitles). Anyway, we sat down just as the couple made their grand entrance into the ballroom dressed in kimonos. Shimoji looked gorgeous with her white face, red lips, and geisha shoes. Of course it was at that moment we realized we'd left the camera in the car. By the time slow-poke Randy returned, the couple had left to change into their American wedding clothes. I attached a picture of Shimoji's mom in her kimono.
The program was very cool. There was a DJ who translated everything in both languages so the Americans knew what was going on. There were traditional Japanese dances with people dressed in kimonos and dancing to Japanese music, then they switched gears and had small kids with clown wigs and funny hats dancing and doing lip syncs. It was all very entertaining and the food was delicious. Each table had a Lazy Susan loaded with Japanese dishes so we just spun it around taking a little of each dish.
FYI, next time you're invited to a Japanese wedding don't bring a gift! You are supposed to give cash, like $100-$200. We felt so stupid with our gift bag, even though it was a nice gift. In return, every person there was given a gift for coming because Japanese people are just generous like that. They gave us a platter and serving bowl that was made here in Oki. Very cool.