Rakuten Wedding to Offer “Virtual Wedding System”

Tokyo, January 7, 2016 – Rakuten, Inc. announced that from today, Rakuten Wedding, the wedding ceremony venue search and preparation site operated by Rakuten, will begin providing companies that plan and manage wedding ceremonies with its “Virtual Wedding System,” a system which allows customers to carry out virtual tours of wedding ceremony venues.

The system allows 3D virtual reality (VR) visuals, created by Rakuten Wedding by combining still images of the wedding ceremony venues or chapels, to be displayed on Oculus Rift, the VR head-mounted display (HMD) developed by US company Oculus VR. Created using unique technology developed by the Rakuten Institute of Technology*, the visuals follow the head movement of the user wearing the HMD giving a 360-degree view of the venue. The system also allows the user to move around the venue using the gamepad (controller) for a virtual experience similar to a tour of the actual venue.

Companies can use the system, HMDs, and other necessary equipment on a monthly basis as a sales tool for conveying the appeal of their venues in an immersive format to prospective customers who cannot tour the venues because they are in use or when they are showcasing their venues at an offsite event. Major bridal company TAKE AND GIVE. NEEDS Co., Ltd. will become the first company to adopt the system when it begins offering a venue guide service utilizing the system from January 10, 2016.

As a result of the decline in marriage numbers and an increase in the number of weddings being held without ceremonies, the scale of the wedding market is shrinking. Rakuten Wedding will continue to support companies involved in wedding ceremonies in order to enable them to differentiate their services and secure customers.

* Rakuten Institute of Technology (https://rit.rakuten.co.jp/) was established in December 2005 as a research and development institute for forecasting the future of the Internet and generating new technologies. It currently operates five bases across four countries in Tokyo, Paris (France), New York and Boston (the U.S.), and Singapore.

■Name: Virtual Wedding System
■Launch Date: January 7, 2016
■Target: Companies that plan and manage wedding ceremonies and receptions
■Usage fees:
・Basic fee: 1.2 million yen (excluding tax) / one-month usage period
   Items included in fee:
    ・System construction, including planning and photographing the images and transforming them into a VR format
    ・Loan of all equipment (Oculus Rift HMDs, laptops and gamepads)
・Extension of usage period: 300,000 yen (excluding tax) / month
・Photographing of additional locations: 300,000 yen (excluding tax) / venue (for venues in metropolitan Tokyo; other regions are negotiable)
■“Virtual Wedding” Movie on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1x4zBVnjUm0