My First Korean Wedding!

The happy couple!

Last weekend, one of my Korean co-teachers got married and as customary she invited all of her co-workers to the wedding. The wedding hall was in between Suwon and Seoul and I must admit I got a little lost finding it. Luckily my friend and I asked some Korean girls and they literally walked us to the hall. Sometimes Koreans are just so nice. Of course the wedding hall was on the 8th floor of a skyscraper. Inside it looked like your average wedding hall minus the fact that there were creepy teddy bears everywhere.

The wedding hall with guests chatting away

Irina the beautiful bride with all of the foreign teachers

     Once we got there and found the other foreign teachers we were asked if we wanted to see the bride. I was a little confused, because you never see the bride before the wedding in a western wedding, but of course said yes. The bride was in a small room next to the wedding hall getting pictures taken with everyone. She of course looked gorgeous and she was wearing a beautiful traditional western wedding dress. After taking a few pictures with her we went to find some seats in the wedding hall.

The mothers of the bride and groom bowing respectfully to each other.

       Unfortunately there were twice as many people as there were seats so we ended up standing in the back. The wedding started by ringing a gong three times and then the groom followed by the bride and her father processed down the aisle. For the most part the wedding was fairly conservative. I have heard all sorts of stories about light shows, dry ice, and rock songs being common place at weddings. The ceremony itself was entirely in Korean so I had no idea what was actually going on. I must note that there was an awful lot of clapping. It seemed like every two minutes we were clapping our hands for some reason unbeknownst to me.
     At one point the bride and groom stepped away from the priest and they faced a young boy who started singing a Korean love song. At first it was sweet, but I swear to god the song never ended. It kept going and going and going. It was like the energizer bunny of songs. In addition the young singer was Mariah Careying the hell out of the song. It was all that we could do to not start publicly guffawing. Finally he finished the song an the ceremony continued.

The young singer

      The last part of the ceremony was when both the bride and the groom did a deep traditional bow to both of their respective parents. This is a very Korean way of showing respect to your parents. After this the bride and groom recessed down the aisle to here comes the bride and two girls walked behind them with trumpets. All of a sudden they shot streamers out of the trumpet at the bride and groom. It was the one truly shocking part of the wedding.

And they're married!

      One thing that was strange was that during the ceremony they never closed the doors to the hall. So people attending the wedding kept wandering in and out. People in the wedding hall were also openly having conversations. Others were taking phone calls and talking on the phone as they walked out of the hall. Overall it was a very loud wedding.
   After the ceremony everyone took pictures with the newly wed couple. And by everyone I mean EVERYONE. The entire family, close family, close friends, and finally acquaintances and co-workers. I was in the last group and I was a bit surprised to be included in the wedding photos. After the long photo session we went next door and had a pretty nice buffet dinner. As we were eating the bride and groom changed into their hanboks, which is the traditional Korean dress. They entered the buffet hall and took a two foot long knife and put one cut into a cake, then they lighted this candle spire, and then they poured a bottle of sparking water onto a champagne tour. It was very boom, boom, boom no nonsense.

Lighting the candle spire!

Pouring the sparkling water

      The bride and groom walked by us and we congratulated them and that was the last I saw of them. We finished eating and left. Overall it was a fun affair and it wasn't necessarily as rushed as I had been led to believe. I hope I get to attend another wedding while I'm here and then I will have something to compare it to!