Life is an Adventure: A Korean Wedding

The singles club is nonexistent now. Two of the members have gotten married in the past two months and another is getting married in February. The singles at are school are now few and far between. This is probably a good representation of Korea since being married is so important.

I was excited to be invited to one of the weddings since I was so curious as to what happens in Korean weddings. Before the wedding, I have very minimal knowledge about weddings. I knew that there were wedding halls and that everything took place there, but I was not ready for what I experience.

When we got to the wedding hall there was chaos everywhere. The wedding hall was a three story building and there were multiple weddings happening in the different rooms.

This is outside

and the inside

Once we were directed to the correct location we were guided to a table. At the table there were two men who was recording everything they received. In Korea they do not give presents for weddings but rather just give cash. We were lucky to have gotten that memo prior to the wedding, but being foreigners we could not just give cash we also wanted to give a card, which they refused. They would also not take the cash from our hands. The school nurse was so kind as to jump in and take the money from us, take an envelope from the table, put the money in the envelope, gave the money to the man, and told the man our names, which I later found out she forgot and she told them it was from the foreigners. Once our money was received, we were given a meal ticket.

We then went to the room were the ceremony was taken place. The bride was in a white and very sparkly wedding dress. I later learned that they do not purchase the gown, but instead rent it from the wedding hall, which has a huge selection.

No real bridesmaids. They are actually staff that comes in the package deal

They are blowing out a candle on a cake

The streamers shot out of the the flower arrangement

The wedding was different then back at home mostly because people were talking, on their cell phones, and constantly walking in and out of the hall. It also seemed very impersonal since everyone gets the same kind of wedding. There was also some Karaoking at the end, which was very Korean.

A very cutesy Korean photo of the couple

After the ceremony we headed to the second floor for our meal. It was a very large cafeteria style room and the meal was buffet style. Tables were found everywhere and instead of center pieces they had soda and beer. There was staff just walking around and cleaning all the empty tables and replenishing the drinks. The people in the room were from different weddings and didn't know each other. There were also TVs showing live footage of the weddings that were currently going on so we could have just ate and watched from that room.