So I’ve been doing many things in the last few weeks. One of these things was go to a Korean wedding! A co-worker was getting married and she invited everyone from the school.
I went with the other foreign teachers from my school. From the left: Joey, Doug, Julio, Ellie (The girl I replaced), and Gabriel. Honorable mention goes to Josephine, she showed up 10 minutes after this photo, you will see a photo of her in the ‘Halloween at the Hakwon,’ post that will be up soon!
The invitation that I got was very traditional looking so I was expecting a traditional Korean wedding. What I actually went to, was very much modern.
The wedding took place in a tall 15 story building, which was meant for only weddings! There were probably 20 weddings going on in that building the same day as the one I went to. The wedding itself had almost a fashion show type setup. It was decked out to be very fancy and formal. There were chandeliers, massive amounts of flowers, and a glittery starlight backdrop at the front stage. There was a raised catwalk aisle which the bride and groom walked down together at both the beginning and the end of the ceremony. On either side of the stage were many round tables with black tablecloths and covered chairs. This is where the family sitting and watching. Since Koreans tend to invite everyone they know, it was pretty packed! Friends and co-workers stood in the back of the room. Throughout the ceremony people were walking in and out of the room, it seemed to be fairly informal in that sense.
The ceremony started with the bride and groom walking down the aisle together. They then did the equivalent of exchanging vows and a blessing from the person performing the ceremony. Then it got funny…. A friend of the bride and groom sang the happy couple a song (fairly normal) but when the song was finished he wasn’t done. Watch this video to understand…
As you can see, the groom decided to get into the fun himself and start dancing away, meanwhile embarrassing the bride enough that she was crying. It was pretty fun to watch. After the groom had his fun the happy couple stepped off each side of the stage. One side was the grooms family and one side was the brides family. They bowed first to the mother and father of the bride and then to the mother (no father) of the groom, they then climbed back up on the stage to bow to everyone else. Once they were done they walked back down the aisle and the wedding was over.
This next photo is a professional photo of the couple. They had a bunch of them, in many of them they were doing cutesie poses, this one was my favorite (the fact that it is Photoshopped is besides the point).
After the ceremony, we were invited up to one of the top floors to have dinner. The dinner was not private, it was a huge buffet. There were guest from many other weddings in the same HUGE buffet as us. Below is a photo of the happy couple in their second outfit of the evening, the outfits were pretty!
That’s all for this post. ‘Halloween at the Hakwon’ will be up soon!
-Kara
call me kara d 
They are wearing hanboks in that second picture, that is VERY traditional. Most couples don’t even wear them, they just buy them and say they are their wedding hanbok!