Wedding traditions, part 3

Yesterday I promised you that I would be touching today upon the other and most noticeable Japanese element in our wedding: the sake ritual.

The sake ritual is one of the oldest elements of the Japanese wedding ceremony, dating back to a time when sharing a sip of sake was as formal a bond as a Victorian handshake. The ritual as it is practiced today is known colloquially as the san san ku do: three [san] sets of three sips, for a total of nine times [ku do]. Starting with the smallest of three nested cups, the groom drinks a small amount of sake in three sips. The cup is then refilled and passed to the bride, who does the same. They move on to the middle cup, then to the largest. At the conclusion of the ceremony, both families drink together to signify the unification not only of the bride and groom, but of their families and traditions as well.

The sake set that is used for the ceremony, as you can tell from this description, is a very specific type. I scoured the web (pre-Google this took a bit more effort than it would today) and finally found a store in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo that had such a thing. In fact, they had two - one in red lacquer and one in black. The one we chose (lucky red, of course!), was etched with images of pine, bamboo, and plum.

At the very end of our western wedding ceremony, we had my little sister (then 10 years old), our sake maiden, pour for us. As she poured, the officiant explained the meaning of the symbols on the sake set: pine for longevity and endurance; bamboo for constancy; plum for hope. Then we walked out to our parents, poured for them, and they drank together to symbolize the joining of the families.

Afterwards, one of DH's grandmothers came up to us, beaming, and said that when she was young, she herself had served as a sake maiden at a wedding ceremony. She hadn't understood what it was all about, and had wondered many a time, but had never known for sure - until this very day.

I beamed back, too thrilled to speak.