Our Wedding Story: romance blossoms while dancing at Trinity

Mao Ito & Yoshiko Katayama

Mao, from Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture, arrived to study at Trinity College Dublin in September 2008 and met Yoshiko, then in third year, at a welcome night for new Japanese students.

Friends first, the pair – who grew up less than two hours from each other in Japan – began spending more time together from January when Yoshiko, a member of TCD’s Japanese society, was organising a cultural night. She asked Mao to lead a lesson in So-ranbushi, a traditional Japanese festive dance, and soon after that, they began dating.

“We knew we’d get married,” they say, “and having our wedding in Trinity was the dream.”

After a proposal in Japan on Christmas Eve 2014, Mao and Yoshiko were married in the chapel of Trinity on December 17th 2016.

Friends and family around a fire

Joined by both sets of parents, the newlyweds are especially grateful to their closest college friend, Ken Waide, without whose help they say the planning would have been very difficult. “Arranging a wedding in Ireland is very different to what we have in Japan.”

Following the ceremony, the bride and groom hosted dinner for 30 guests at Fallon and Byrne and instead of a party that night, they were content to hang around with loved ones by the fire in their cosy rented penthouse.

“It was so great that we could finally introduce our Irish friends to our family – they became big fans of the Irish people and how friendly and lovely they were. Mao’s younger brother, who’d never been to Europe before, even told us that he’d like to study here!”

Mao, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and Yoshiko, a consultant at PwC, live in Tokyo and say that life as a married couple is, “even happier than before”.