Hello again! It's been a while since I've posted. Unfortunately I haven't done anything very exciting the last month and a half. My weekends have either been spent recovering from the plague and/or being allergic to Korea, and others have been filled with social events for work: welcoming new teachers, saying goodbye to others, etc. This weekend however, was Amy's wedding. Amy was a Korean teacher at the school, whose last day was a few weeks ago to prepare for her wedding. She invited everyone at the school, and it certainly was an interesting experience. They style it as a "Western" wedding but as you may imagine by my use of quotation marks, it's pretty far from a western wedding.
These weddings are held in large buildings, with many floors and up to six or seven weddings going on at one time (depending I suppose on the size). The bride sits in a room attached to the wedding hall, which is basically a photo studio with good lighting, and people come in and take pictures with her and then go out into the lobby to wait. The hall itself wasn't enough to hold all the guests, only those who got their first actually got to sit at the tables. The father and mother of the bride and groom sit in four regal-looking chairs on either side of the catwalk, facing the bride and groom.
The whole wedding is very theatrical. On the right you can see the champaign fountain, and the left is a cake display which had candles all around it that lit up and dry ice which added some steam. There was also a part where three of the grooms friends sang karaoke like the wedding hall was a norebang, and after that the groom sang a song to the bride. What happened in the actual ceremony I am at a loss to tell you, as I don't speak a word of Korean. What I can gather though, was that there was not a lot of a traditional Korean wedding going on, save for the end when the groom gave his bride, her mother, and also his mothet piggy back rides, which symbolizes accepting obligations to both his mother and new wife.
After the ceremony, we went to another level and handed in our buffet ticket. It put any large scale buffet I've ever seen in America to shame. This isn't all for just Amy's wedding, these were people for all the weddings that were happening at the wedding hall.
It goes on and on past this photograph.
We joined the owner of the school for lunch, where we at least got a better understanding of what we had just witnessed! He said it was definitely different than when he got married, which had been more of the traditional Korean wedding, but younger people are moving more toward this ceremony. From the way he was talking, this ceremony doesn't make the marriage official, but it's rather a celebration of what's to come. After the honeymoon, the bride and groom return to Korea and go to an office to register the marriage. The person who was standing in front of the bride and groom was a former professor of the groom, and the one on the microphone leading everyone and being what sounded like a happy fellow was a friend.
The timeline for a wedding here is also very different. We were invited about three weeks ago, and I couldn't believe how soon it was! But whereas back home you have to make a hundred phone calls to arrange a hundred different things, here you just find a wedding hall with an open time slot and they take care of everything: hair, dresses, bridesmaids (seriously), photographer, flowers, everything. I suppose it's still a very stressful time in Korea, but at least the pain is over a short period of time and not a year or more!
Amy and the groom stopped up at the buffet floor to say hello to a few people and I managed to grab a picture with them in their hanbok. They do the main ceremony in Western clothes (tux and a white dress) then afterwords change into the traditional clothes and take pictures, and I think also have a smaller and private ceremony with the family.
These weddings are held in large buildings, with many floors and up to six or seven weddings going on at one time (depending I suppose on the size). The bride sits in a room attached to the wedding hall, which is basically a photo studio with good lighting, and people come in and take pictures with her and then go out into the lobby to wait. The hall itself wasn't enough to hold all the guests, only those who got their first actually got to sit at the tables. The father and mother of the bride and groom sit in four regal-looking chairs on either side of the catwalk, facing the bride and groom.
The whole wedding is very theatrical. On the right you can see the champaign fountain, and the left is a cake display which had candles all around it that lit up and dry ice which added some steam. There was also a part where three of the grooms friends sang karaoke like the wedding hall was a norebang, and after that the groom sang a song to the bride. What happened in the actual ceremony I am at a loss to tell you, as I don't speak a word of Korean. What I can gather though, was that there was not a lot of a traditional Korean wedding going on, save for the end when the groom gave his bride, her mother, and also his mothet piggy back rides, which symbolizes accepting obligations to both his mother and new wife.
After the ceremony, we went to another level and handed in our buffet ticket. It put any large scale buffet I've ever seen in America to shame. This isn't all for just Amy's wedding, these were people for all the weddings that were happening at the wedding hall.
It goes on and on past this photograph.
We joined the owner of the school for lunch, where we at least got a better understanding of what we had just witnessed! He said it was definitely different than when he got married, which had been more of the traditional Korean wedding, but younger people are moving more toward this ceremony. From the way he was talking, this ceremony doesn't make the marriage official, but it's rather a celebration of what's to come. After the honeymoon, the bride and groom return to Korea and go to an office to register the marriage. The person who was standing in front of the bride and groom was a former professor of the groom, and the one on the microphone leading everyone and being what sounded like a happy fellow was a friend.
The timeline for a wedding here is also very different. We were invited about three weeks ago, and I couldn't believe how soon it was! But whereas back home you have to make a hundred phone calls to arrange a hundred different things, here you just find a wedding hall with an open time slot and they take care of everything: hair, dresses, bridesmaids (seriously), photographer, flowers, everything. I suppose it's still a very stressful time in Korea, but at least the pain is over a short period of time and not a year or more!
Amy and the groom stopped up at the buffet floor to say hello to a few people and I managed to grab a picture with them in their hanbok. They do the main ceremony in Western clothes (tux and a white dress) then afterwords change into the traditional clothes and take pictures, and I think also have a smaller and private ceremony with the family.
All in all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday and I'm glad I was invited along!
To see the rest of the album, you can visit it by clicking here
Karin or "Carrot Teacher," as my babies garbled my name most recently.
