The shinzen kekkonshiki feels immemorial and is not: the form was essentially created for the 1900 wedding of the Crown Prince, later the Taishō Emperor, at a shrine within the palace, and popularised afterwards by Hibiya Daijingū. Before that, ordinary Japanese weddings were domestic affairs conducted in the house with no religious officiant. The rite is small — typically only close family, around twenty people — and its centre is san-san-kudo, three-three-nine: bride and groom each take three sips from each of three stacked lacquer cups, and the families then drink together to become kin. There is a purification, a pledge read aloud by the groom with the bride adding her name, an exchange of rings that was added in the twentieth century, and an offering of a sakaki branch. A miko performs a dance. Shrine weddings have declined sharply against Western-style chapel weddings, which are performed in wedding halls by hired officiants for couples who are not Christian, and which most Japanese people regard as a matter of dress rather than of religion.