Chapter 31The few short weeks between Sochi and The ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Saitama, Japan, had been used for training and quickly planning a wedding ceremony that would take place the weekend before.
Erika was exquisite in her wedding-day garb. In Japanese, a shiro-muku—”shiro” meaning white, “muku” meaning pure—was traditional bridal attire. A lightweight white kakeshita kimono was tied at the waist with a white obi. Over that, her attendants had helped her into an uchikake, a heavily brocaded wedding coat in ivory tone-on-tone jacquard silk. The ornate wedding coat with a long, padded bottom that trailed along the floor would be worn only during the ceremony. Erika, like any traditional Japanese bride, though she was hardly that, would wear three distinct outfits with
