Red String of Fate

...or how I love doing something meaningful for cheap.

When Beau and I were talking about the feel/theme/etc of our wedding back in the day, we both agreed that we wanted to incorporate Japan into the day.  I feel like this is hard to do when you're both a couple of white kids from Midwestern America...I always picture the cheesy trinkets and black and red and it really kinda makes me think of this SNL sketch...

(I'm sure a not-recorded-from-a-phone version is here).

So we set out to capture some of the things we love about Japan without going overboard.  I searched for Japanese wedding traditions and found a thread on Weddingbee that related and was super simple to carry out.   A Japanese contributor said that "The Japanese believe that the gods tie an invisible red string around the ankles of men and women who are destined to be soul mates and will one day marry each other.  But when you watch or see many modern day Japanese interpretations they usually show the red string attached to a pinky or finger."  If you remember, the events of December 2010 convinced us there was a reason we kept finding each other over the last 7 years, and so I e-mailed Beau the idea to see what he thought of it.  He agreed and loved it, and it was probably one of the first inspiration building blocks of our wedding.

Fast forward roughly a year and picture me walking through Daiso (or a very nice dollar store) and stumbling across this:

 It's a spool of that silky red cord, exactly what I was hoping to find to tie around our fingers/hands.  For only 105 yen!  It's a little more than one dollar...maybe like $1.25ish.  It's a small part of the ceremony, and not even an active part.  We'll just tie them on, and include an explanation in the program...because otherwise I'm sure most will wonder why the hell we have red string on.  I don't want to answer those questions...I want to eat instead!  It's really the simple things that make me happy...