Indigo Wedding Presents

My good old friend Luc got married recently at the Meiji Shrine. The ceremony and dinner party was just for close friends and family. The bigger party and dinner will be next weekend. Luc is a celebrity in the beer world as a master brewer. He fell in love with Japan over ten years ago. He then fell in love with Eri. He moved to Japan and bought a bankrupt brewery and got it up and running  (and selling out of beer immediately).

Eri wore a traditional kimono for the wedding ceremony in the back recesses of the Shinto shrine. The hat is called,"hiding the horns of jealousy". They are made of silk but not long ago they were actually silk floss hankies that the newly wed bride would take to her new home and spin into thread to weave. 

In Japan, the couple give presents to the guests who attend the wedding. We spent the day indigo dyeing presents. Long tenugui towels that will wrap individual bottles of beer that Luc is brewing specially for the occasion.

One good beer wrapped in a hand dyed indigo tenugui. We made one hundred of them in two days. Hopefully the people who receive them will treat them with some respect and keep them for a long time. (The beer should be savoured as well.)  

The tenugui before they are cut into sections are drying upstairs next to this years crop of indigo that will be fermented into indigo paste in a few weeks time.