My outfit for Hong's wedding

I spent this past weekend in London because of a wedding. Hong was getting married, and she had a non-traditional Japanese wedding, so of course I had to wear kimono. She said to go all out, and so I did! I choose to wear my newest furisode, although I had it for close to half a year now. Technically, this is only my second time EVER wearing a furisode, the first time being my birthday in 2008. But since it was a non-traditional wedding, I didn't care that I'm married and shouldn't be wearing furisode anymore.

My husband and I checked into the same hotel as she was staying at on Friday. On the day of the wedding, we actually switched rooms for the morning because our room turned out to have the most space, and Hong needed all the space she could get to get dressed. She hired Kimono de Go to dress her, but used all of her own kimono. I got dressed in the other room and came back to our room at the last minute to watch Mamiko-san from Kimono de Go put finishing touches on Hong.

We encountered a semi-minor set back when we found out that the car that was supposed to take us to the church had left, because the front desk idiot person  told the driver that he saw a bride to get into another white car... Who knew there were more weddings going on and more white cars picking up brides? Regardless, the driver shouldn't have left without his bride and the front desk person shouldn't have said anything other than please call the person who hired the car. Hong said that I looked like I was about to throttle him because he tried to make chit chat (his words) while we were waiting for the taxi we asked him to get. It was all confusing and annoying, but we finally got to the wedding fashionably late.

 My husband wore a formal kimono set that we borrowed from Hong, because we actually don't own a formal set that fits him properly. Incidentally, we matched! And also incidentally, he is in love with that set now, so I'm going to be on the lookout for another one for him :).

I was very excited to be in the wedding party! Afterwords, I helped Hong to take off her kimono of doom uchikake so she could breathe again and not risk falling over.

We took some photos in the church, and while everyone else stayed behind, I went to the reception place with the other bridesmaid and several other people. She set up the cake while I got Robert to take photos of me.

This is not a proper musubi, but something I've made up on the go. Hong actually let me borrow her biyosugata, but I took one look at that thing and decided that it would be better if I could just tie my obi without. Even if it's not a proper musubi, it held up for a whole day and looked pretty good, so I was happy.

Yes, I did wear okobo too! Not for a whole day, but only during reception, because I wasn't going to take any chances and fall on my face while walking in the wedding ceremony. Of course, I still had to make it really hard on myself since I had couple of glasses of Rekorderlig cider and got super tipsy, but I've managed not to make a full of myself. I even managed to walk up and down several flights of stairs in those okobo, so at this point I'm going to start considering myself an okobo pro! :P :P

Overall it was a great wedding and I had a blast. Hong looked absolutely GORGEOUS and I can't wait to see the professional photos!

~ Lyuba

WHERE will I put all this?!

Hello Everyone,

I've been waiting on a few big boxes full of kimono greatness for some time now, so of course when I went to the post office today, and park far away from the door, two of those boxes choose to arrive. Thankfully I had a friend with me who helped to carry one of those boxes. :)

Yup, the Obi Bundle of DOOOOOOOOOOOM had finally arrived! It sure took it sweet time, but I wasn't too worried because I knew that anything other than Priority mail takes a while to get to me.

The other box was from Shinei, and here is what was inside:

Meiji tsuke obi

Chuya obi

Funky komono

This one is extra puurrrrty!

My second furisode! 

Furisode juban

Kimono coat

Have you gotten anything new lately?

~ Lyuba

Positively Scandalous or Oiran Style photo shoot

For a few month now, Hong and I were talking about doing a kimono photo shoot with some of her kimono that I've been dying to wear. You know, if I can't own them then I can at least experience wearing them right? This week we were finally able to get together and do a photo shoot!

I picked her up from Eppings and we drove back to my house, where I promptly started applying my makeup. I have to admit that I WAS going for the white(ish) face because I've been dying to give it a try. The day before I looked up oiran makeup and as far as I could tell, there is no difference in the makeup between oiran and geisha. If there is, I don't know about it and can't tell.

So first we did a regular furisode photo shoot, but I will post it tomorrow because today I'm very excited about my super scandalous oiran photos! Yup, we sure went there. Semi-naughty kimono photo shoot, but without connecting it to geisha. We were going for a stylized oiran look with the obi tied up front. The rest of stuff are for pure naughtiness, as I don't think oiran ever wore their kimono that way.

Oh yeah, some of you might wander who oiran were. Well, I'm not an expert by any means, but they were basically high class courtesans in Japan.  Yup, totally entitled to some naughtiness so erotic kimono photos are pretty appropriate to them.

The location left lots to be desired (my backyard) but I still love the photos. I think they turned out very well considering what we had to work with, and who we had to fight for the peace of shooting. I think I (gently) kicked my kitties about 100 times trying to get them out of the photos.