Tokyo Disneyland offers the ultimate fairy-tale wedding

The pamphlet describes it as “your childhood dream of a princess’ wedding come true,” but the price might give whoever is picking up the tab a few night sweats.

From September through January, Tokyo Disneyland in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, will be hosting two to four weddings a month at its Cinderella Castle for a cool 7.5 million yen ($94,000).

The first couple to tie the knot will be Takayuki Abiko, 34, and Mayumi Kagoshi, 31, who said in an e-mail message to The Asahi Shimbun: “We are so grateful. It will be a day we will not forget all our life.”

Applications to Milial Resort Hotels, which operates Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, began in April.

Abiko and Kagoshi submitted their application in April. Interviewed at the same time, they said they learned about Disney’s Royal Dream Wedding plan on the Internet. They had been on dates to Tokyo Disneyland many times and Abiko, wearing black-framed glasses and a tight-cut jacket, said he had heard an internal voice telling him to have the wedding there.

Kagoshi, attired in a light pink fluffy one-piece dress, said she was excited at the thought of the wedding, which includes a ceremony inside Cinderella Castle, a march through the streets in the grounds of the park, a reception for 50 guests at Tokyo Disneyland Hotel attended by Disney characters, accommodation and an overnight stay on the wedding couple’s first anniversary.

The 7.5-million-yen tag is more than double the average cost of a wedding in the Tokyo metropolitan area, according to a survey by Zexy wedding magazine last year. The average wedding and reception with about 70 guests cost 3.56 million yen, according to that research.

“From a common sense point of view, the money is the same as the down payment for a new house,” the Disneyland applicant said. “(But) we will be able to tell our children that their mother and father were married here.”

He said: “We are just an ordinary working couple. We saved money without spending too much. We have come a long way.”

“To have a reception at a Tokyo Disneyland-affiliated hotel costs about 4 million yen,” he said. “By adding 3.5 million yen we can have something nobody has ever enjoyed. I would say this is a reasonable price. It keeps the magic alive.”