"Tokyo Disney Weddings


I had an opportunity to tour the wedding facilities at Tokyo Disney Resort in March 2010 and thought I’d share what I learned. The Director of Resort Operations and the General Manager of Hotel Mira Costa led me on a fast-paced, expertly timed tour of the wedding sites at Hotel Mira Costa and the Ambassador Hotel, including stops to see parts of actual weddings!

Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings in Tokyo are a bit different. Rather than building your wedding from the ground up, you are required to choose from several packages (the ones at the Ambassador Hotel are themed to each of the princesses), and you can’t really change elements or provide your own, well, anything—even the dress! You have to rent a dress (or two or three) from them. (When I asked how it would work for a Godzilla-sized bride such as myself, they said they’d make it work.) But, like they kept saying, Disney provides a certain kind of wedding, and only people who want that kind of wedding choose Disney, so no one’s upset that they can’t modify the packages. (Don’t get any ideas, DFTW Orlando…)

They do up to eight weddings a day, and they are carefully programmed. Each hotel contains all the facilities you could possibly need, including a bridal salon (like a miniature, crowded Franck’s), a beauty salon, the bridal gown salon, a photo studio, and various waiting rooms. Each wedding party makes the same circuit of the various rooms on their way to the altar and then the reception, one group after another. It’s a pretty slick operation, and I was impressed by how many services they provide.

The average wedding size is 60 or 70 guests, with prices starting around ¥1.5 million ($16,090) for 20 people. I can’t remember if they said the annual number of weddings at Tokyo Disney Resort is 1,400 or 1,800 – must be the latter because they said there are 840 at Mira Costa alone and the Ambassador is actually the more popular venue. So far they have decided not to hold weddings at the new Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, partly because it’s feared that people will stop booking at the other two hotels. There are no in-park events except for the gondola ride add-on to Mira Costa weddings, which I’ll post some pictures of. After the ceremony, the bride and groom and their guests parade through Tokyo Disney Sea to the gondola dock, and then the bride and groom get a private boat ride complete with musicians and singing gondoliers.

The people I spoke with had never heard of the wedding-style vow renewals we have in the States. A few couples have booked anniversary receptions to celebrate, but they’d never heard of having an entire ceremony and everything. I think they were joking when they said I’d given them a great idea for making more money, but I hope they’ll really consider it!