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Comment by wyclif | Hacker News Reader

In Japan there is a similar phenomenon for couples about to get married; it's called "Rent a White Minister." Japanese couples who want a fancy wedding often rent a white guy to perform the ceremony. Very often, probably most of the time, said white guy isn't even an ordained minister in any Church.

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Someone tried to recruit me for this at the church I used to attend in Kyoto. (Not anybody we knew -- they just walked in after Mass and came up to speak to me.)

My priest responded on my behalf with all the moneychangers-in-the-temple enthusiasm you would expect.

Awesome!

Very often, probably most of the time, said white guy isn't even an ordained minister in any Church.

It's not really an issue, though, because doing a "Christian" wedding is more of a fashion statement than a religious one; there are very few practicing Christians among the native Japanese population.

Quite. There's a lucrative industry in Japan of providing gorgeous purpose-built western-style chapels, or rather, their imagined vision of what a wedding chapel should look like. No one is getting scammed because they are only doing it because they want the movie-like glamour of the fashion of a western wedding.

This is also a country where many buddhist and shinto temples are for-profit family businesses, so the whole concept of authenticity is a bit lost...

So it's basically Japans version of a Vegas wedding?

I live in Japan now and just heard about that this past weekend. It's not as lucrative as some of the other gigs that have been mentioned but you basically get paid to hang out at a wedding and read some scripted stuff. I'm trying to get into it now.

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