Life

This Company Will Throw You A Pokemon Wedding Complete With A Pikachu Meet-And-Greet

by Lucia Peters
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Themed weddings are nothing new, but here’s a little tidbit that will likely blow every other themed wedding you’ve ever encountered right out of the water: You can have an official Pokemon wedding in Japan now, thanks to a venture called the Pokemon Bridal Fair. And before you ask: Yes, it appears that you can, in fact, have Pikachu in your wedding party. I’m not kidding. If you’ve ever wanted to ring in your nuptials with the help of a bright yellow, mouse-like creature with the ability to channel electricity, now’s your chance.

The Pokemon Bridal Fair is operated by Escrit, a company based in Tokyo that operates not only within the wedding industry, but also within the construction and real estate industries. (Large Japanese corporations tend to be conglomerates with wide and diverse areas of coverage.) Escrit’s hand in the wedding industry is arguably its most notable, however; in addition to planning and managing weddings (and covering every single aspect you could think of for said weddings, all the way down to the tiniest detail), it also operates more than 30 wedding venues across Japan. It’s no doubt a lucrative business — as of the 2015 fiscal year, the average wedding in Japan cost 3.59 million yen, or more than $33,000 USD, according to a survey conducted by leading Japanese Bridal magazine Zexy in 2016.

And yes, the Pokemon Bridal Fair is legit; according to the copyright info on the Pokemon Bridal Fair website, Escrit teamed up with Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures — who collectively own the Pokemon Company — to bring the venture to life. Per the official Pokemon information Twitter account, Poke Times, the Pokemon Bridal Fair began accepting reservations on Feb. 27, 2019.

The service’s website is solely in Japaneseand it consists entirely of image files, rather than text, so alas, Google Translate can’t work its magic for those of us who don’t speak Japanese here — but the English-language Japanese news outlet Sora News 24’s report on the themed weddings from February provides valuable details about exactly what the typical Pokemon Bridal Fair package includes. It all starts with your wedding certificate, which will of course be Pokemon-themed; then, once you actually arrive at the Escrit venue you’ve chosen for your ceremony on the big day, you can also expect Pikachu-adorned place cards and programs to let your guests know where they should sit and what the event’s festivities will include. A welcome board placed at the entrance to the reception’s location will also bring a spark of Pokemon joy to the proceedings.

Speaking of the reception, food is included, of course; the menu is inspired by French cuisine, although its presentation is no doubt its high point: Each plate is designed to invoke Pokemon-esque details, with edible details including items shaped like Pikachu’s tail and macarons made to look like Pokeballs. The cake, naturally, is frosted not white, but pale yellow, as well as decorated with citrus slices, sprigs of greenery, the aforementioned Pokeball-shaped macarons, and a plaque of some sort that reads “Happy Wedding” and depicts two Pikachus decked out in their best wedding attire.

But what of the possibility of having Pikachu in your wedding party? Well, technically, that may or may not be the case; however, you can arrange to have mascot-style Pikachus at your wedding. According to Eli, a German blogger living in Japan who went to one of the locations at which you can preview the Pokemon Bridal Fair in Tokyo earlier this year and wrote about the experience at the website City Cost, the two Pikachus seen in the photos make up the “Pikachu greeting” offering. The greeting’s cost is listed as 600,000 yen, or about $5,500 USD; however, when Eli and her partner balked a little at the initial estimate for a Pokemon wedding quoted to them by the Pokemon Bridal Fair, the service offered them a second estimate “pretty quickly” which knocked the Pikachu meet-and-greet fee down to… drumroll, please… zero yen.

You do apparently have to sign the contract for the whole shebang right then and there to get the price quoted to you, wrote Eli, so the Pokemon Bridal Fair appears to make a hard sell — but it seems there’s room for some negotiation, at least.

For more info about the Pokemon Bridal Fair, check out its official website (although again, note that it’s entirely in Japanese); if you want to visit one of Escrit’s Pokemon Bridal Fair locations or inquire about an actual Pokemon wedding, head here to make a reservation; and if you just want to see a ton of photos of a Pokemon wedding, head here. Should you choose to get married with Pikachu in attendance, your wedding will no doubt be the very best, like no one ever was.