Danish weddings for Japanese

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33191, 3 April 1973, Page 6

Danish weddings for Japanese

(yew Zealand Press Association

COPENHAGEN, April 1

Twelve brides and 12 grooms shunning expensive Japanese wedding traditions arrived in Copenhagen yesterday for marriages in the Town Hall and Mediterranean honeymoons.

The 12 couples were blaz■ing a trail for more to follow next month on special wedding package tours organised by a Danish travel agency for young Japanese who want to escape the expense of giving gifts to relatives and friends on their wedding day in Japan. Maersk Air Travel, the organiser of the European wed-ding-and-honeymoon tours, said the gifts frequently exceeded the price of the tour • —SNZIB7S a couple. The 12 couples will be pronounced man and wife by the

Mayor of Copenhagen (Mr Boerge Schmidt) in a ceremony at the Town Hall today, and have a wedding lunch at a country inn.

The brides brought traditional Japanese kimonos for the wedding, and Japanese living in Denmark were to help with the elaborate dressing for the ceremony. Tomorrow the newly-weds will, in accordance with Japanese tradition, plant cherry trees in a suburban park before leaving by air for a week-long honeymoon in Majorca.