Before winter started, we went back to Casa Real once again, and this time is for Kelly and Richard’s wedding.  We shot their engagement pictures last winter and the pictures turned out wonderful.  Ever since then, we have been expecting to meet them again on their big day.

Kelly’s family came from Japan.  Though I have shot a few Japanese/Japanese-born-American before, it was on Kelly and Richard’s wedding that I got a chance to take a closer look at some of the authentic Japanese tradition: Koto play and Taiko performance.

Koto is a tranditional Japanese stringed musical instrument and, according to wikipedia, the national instrument of Japan.  When the musician, dressed in kimono, sit down before the ceremony and started to set up koto, I was immediately mesmerized.   Even though I barely know anything about music, hearing just a few notes played on the koto brought to my mind the simple yet elegant beauty of traditional Japan.   “Popular among aristocrats, the koto was a romantic instrument in ancient Japanese literature. In one section of The Tale of Genji, Japan’ s first novel, Prince Genji falls deeply in love with a woman he has never seen after hearing her exquisite koto performance. The novel was written by the authoress Murasaki Shikibu, who was an accomplished koto player herself. ” (Koto World)

If “romantic” is the word to be associated with koto, the taiko performance Kelly and Richard brought to their reception was best described as “exciting, sensational, and awe-inspiring”. Taiko means “drum” in Japanese (etymologically “great” or “wide drum”).  Filled the room with rolling thunders, the three drummers blended rhythms, dance, and martial arts into a perfect and powerful harmony that almost freezed the time.  For a moment, I felt that I was brought back across time and space into castles and shrines in ancient Japan, a scene one would only see in motion picture movies.

Koto and taiko play filled Kelly and Richard’s wedding with romance and excitement.  Kelly and Richard, Congratulations! I am sure romance and excitement, two key ingredients of marriage, will accompany you beyond your wedding and throughout your life together.