page_title: Shinto wedding
section_title: Costume
hierarchical_section_title: Shinto wedding / The ceremony / Costume
caption_attribution_description: Bride at a shinto wedding in the Meiji shrine
context_page_description: Shinto weddings, Shinzen kekkon, began in Japan during the early 20th century, popularized after the marriage of Crown Prince Yoshihito and his bride, Princess Kujo Sadako. The ceremony relies heavily on Shinto themes of purification, and involves ceremonial sake drinking of three cups three times, the nan-nan-san-ku-do. Shinto weddings are in decline. Fewer Japanese people get married, and those who do often choose Western-style chapel ceremonies.
context_section_description: Shinto brides and grooms typically wear kimono; the bride wears either a Uchikake kimono (打ち掛け, lit. "knockout") (a thick, colourful (mainly red), heavily-brocaded, highly-formal kimono, worn outside the actual kimono and obi, unfastened, as a sort of overcoat), or a Shiromuku kimono (白無垢, lit. "white pure-innocence") (typical colours for these kimono include red and white, colours of Shinto purity and good luck.), oftentimes combined with a wig.  The bride may change into a red kimono for the Wedding reception events after the ceremony for good luck.  
  There is also a headdress; either a Tsunokakushi (角隠し, lit. "horn-hiding"), a headdress made from a rectangular piece of cloth, often made of white silk (to match the bride's shiromuku kimono), which covers the bridal high topknot (a Bunkin Takashimada), a kind of chonmage (a traditional topknot); they're traditionally worn to veil the bride's metaphorical 'horns of jealousy, ego and selfishness', and also symbolizes the bride's resolve to become a gentle and obedient wife; or a wataboshi (綿帽子, lit. "cotton hood"), an all-white hood or cowl, worn as an alternative to the tsunokakushi, and the Japanese equivalent to the Western marriage ceremony's bridal veil; its purpose is to hide the bride's face from all others, except for the bridegroom, until the end of the wedding ceremony. It was adapted from the katsuki, a hood worn outdoors to keep away dust and prevent from the cold, by married women in samurai families, from the Muromachi to Momoyama periods, before being taken up by younger women from the Edo period onwards. Like the shiromuku its worn in concert with, the wataboshi is a symbol of innocence and purity; its worn only outside in outdoor receptions with the shiromuku-only, not with coloured wedding iro-uchikake kimono, or during indoor receptions.
caption: A bride at a Shinto wedding shows her wig and tsuno-kakushi headdress.
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