Yuino vs. the Wedding: Is It Normal to Skip It, and Why Do Relatives Suddenly Multiply?
Listen to people talk about getting married and the vocabulary suddenly explodes partway through.
Yuino. The families' meet-up. The ceremony. The reception. Registering the marriage.
And as the wedding gets closer, it's no longer just your parents, siblings and grandparents. Uncles, aunts, cousins, their spouses... people you almost never see in daily life all show up at once on the seating chart.
Look at that chart, with relatives you never think about suddenly appearing all together, and the reaction comes naturally:
"Wait, where did all these relatives come from?"
Here's the short answer. Yuino (a traditional Japanese engagement ceremony between the two families) and the wedding are separate things. Skipping yuino is no longer unusual at all. And the wedding doesn't actually create new relatives. Marriage and the rituals around it simply make both families' networks visible all at once.
1. First, a quick sort: yuino, ceremony, reception and registration each do a different job
Laid out as simply as possible:
| What | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Yuino | A traditional Japanese ritual where both families formally confirm the engagement |
| Families' meet-up dinner | A fairly casual get-together where both families meet, celebrate the engagement and get to know each other |
| Wedding ceremony | The ritual where the couple vows to marry |
| Reception | The party where the couple announces the marriage to relatives, friends and coworkers and hosts them |
| Marriage registration form | The filing that makes a marriage legally valid in Japan |
Zexy (a major Japanese wedding magazine and website) likewise describes yuino as an "engagement ritual," the ceremony as the occasion for exchanging vows, and the reception as a party that announces the marriage to the people around you. [1][2]
Under Japanese law, a marriage takes effect through a filing made under the Family Register Act. The Ministry of Justice's guide to the marriage registration form also cites Article 739 of the Civil Code and Article 74 of the Family Register Act. [3]
So, putting it very roughly:
Yuino is the ritual where two families settle the engagement.
The ceremony is the ritual of vowing to marry.
The reception is the banquet that shows everyone "we're married."
The registration form is the legal on-switch.
They all tend to land around the same time, so they get mixed up, but each one has a different department in charge.
2. "We didn't do yuino" is now the norm
The word "yuino" sounds weighty. It feels formal, and it can involve betrothal gifts, a cash gift, dress codes, a set program and each family's own customs, so it's easy to feel that "if you're getting married, you're supposed to do this too."
But today's reality is the opposite.
In the Zexy Wedding Trend Survey 2024, the nationwide estimate was that only 7% of couples held a yuino. Meanwhile 85.6% had only a dinner where the two families met. Couples who did both made up 5.3%, and those who did yuino alone were 1.7%. [1][4]
In short, in modern Japan "no yuino, but a family dinner" is the biggest group by far.
So not doing yuino isn't skipping a step so much as taking the standard route today.
You propose or agree to marry, you greet the parents and have the families meet, and then you move on to registering the marriage and the wedding. Yuino isn't a gate you must pass through along the way.
3. Still, families who do yuino come across as "doing things properly"
Precisely because so few people do yuino now, those who do it stand out as a real traditional ceremony.
At yuino, the two families confirm the engagement and, depending on the region and the family's thinking, may exchange betrothal gifts or money. Practices vary by region, and these days many couples skip having a go-between. [1]
The key point is that yuino is not a mini wedding.
A wedding is where the couple vows to marry and announces it. Yuino comes before that, and its meaning leans toward "both families formally accept this engagement."
So when you see a couple go through yuino properly, it isn't just one more event on the list. It shows they're treating the marriage not only as the couple's decision but as a milestone for both families.
Thinking "wow, they're doing this by the book" is pretty much exactly what the structure suggests.
4. Why it feels like "too many relatives" at the wedding
Normally you almost never see all your relatives at the same time.
The family you see day to day is skewed toward a close circle, like parents and siblings. At a wedding, though, you decide the guest list, introduce relatives, make the seating chart, take group photos and invite both families together.
Then relatives you knew existed but never really thought about all get loaded onto one screen.
Uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings' spouses, the other side's relatives.
It isn't that someone who was zero yesterday sprouted out of nowhere today. It's that relationships scattered in different places suddenly get connected all at once around the event of a marriage.
That's pretty close to what's behind the feeling that "relatives have increased."
A wedding is less a relative-generating machine than a "show all records" button for the family network.
5. Legally, too, marriage does widen your circle of relatives
This feeling isn't only in your head.
Article 725 of the Civil Code defines relatives as blood relatives within the sixth degree, spouses, and in-laws (relatives by marriage) within the third degree. [5]
In-laws here means the family ties that arise through marriage, such as your spouse's side.
One distinction matters, though.
Holding a wedding doesn't create legal relatives on the spot. A marriage under the Japanese system becomes legally valid through the registration form. [3]
And not every relative of the other side who comes to the wedding becomes your legal relative without limit. "Relatives" under the Civil Code have a defined range. [5]
So the "too many relatives" feeling at a wedding is two things overlapping.
One is that marriage creates a legal relationship with in-laws.
The other is that the wedding makes relationships that were invisible until then socially visible.
You feel both at the same moment, so the relatives column seems to have suddenly expanded.
6. In the end, marriage widens from "just the two of us" to "both families"
It starts as a story about the two of you dating and a proposal, but as the marriage gets concrete it grows to include greeting the parents, the families' meet-up, registration, the ceremony and the reception.
Along the way you see two things at once: the feeling that "marriage belongs to the couple," and the reality that "family and relatives show up a lot at this event."
These days most couples don't do yuino, so there are fewer multi-stage "family-to-family" rituals than there used to be. Even so, the wedding still comes with relative introductions, seating and invitations, so both families' networks come to the front all at once. [4][2]
Here's the conclusion.
Not doing yuino is nothing unusual today.
A family that does yuino properly does look like they're doing things by the book, since they've kept even the traditional engagement ritual.
And the feeling of "too many relatives all of a sudden" at a wedding isn't your imagination. But the relatives aren't spawning at the venue. Marriage and the wedding simply bring people from both families who were in the background up to the front all at once.
References (5)
- ゼクシィ「116人に調査【最近の結納事情】費用から結納返しまで今どきの傾向を解説！」。結納を日本の婚約儀礼として説明し、ゼクシィ結婚トレンド調査2024全国推計値で結納実施7％を紹介。情報は2025年7月時点。 zexy.net
- ゼクシィ「結婚披露宴――結婚式との違いは？流れは？」。挙式を結婚を誓うセレモニー、披露宴を結婚をお披露目するパーティーとして整理。 zexy.net
- 法務省「婚姻届」。手続根拠として民法第739条、戸籍法第74条を掲載。 moj.go.jp
- ゼクシィ「両家顔合わせ“しない”ってOK？なしの割合や対応策は？」。ゼクシィ結婚トレンド調査2024全国推計値として、顔合わせのみ85.6％、結納と顔合わせの両方5.3％、結納のみ1.7％を紹介。 zexy.net
- e-Gov法令検索「民法」第725条。親族の範囲として6親等内の血族、配偶者、3親等内の姻族を規定。 laws.e-gov.go.jp
