Korean Wedding Adventures

It has been an interesting experiences getting to know some of the Korean teachers who work with me at the after school academy.  I have a free period during the same time as the head Korean Teacher, Lisa (her English name. . I just realized I don't even know her Korean name) so we have had time over the weeks to talk and get to know each other pretty well.  She is about a year older than me which she explained in Korean culture is the expected age for women to get married.  A few weeks later she announced that she was engaged to be married in a few short months and invited Hubs and I to the wedding!  We were very excited to get the chance to attend a Korean wedding.  However based on the invitation we were a little unsure of the details.  Such as when.  And where. Hmmm. . . .

A few weeks later she asked me and another of the American teachers at the school to sing in her wedding.  Incidentily she had never actually heard any of us sing prior to this and we certainly never claimed to be singers so the request came as quite a shock.  She asked us to sing "Moon River" which based on the number of times we have heard it playing on Korean radio stations much be a favorite here.  One of the other American teachers plays guitar and so it was decided that we would sing a duet of "Moon River" with guitar accompaniment.  There was no rehearsal for the ceremony (at least that we were told about) so we practiced a couple times the week before the wedding in an empty classroom in between classes and decided to "hope for the best"!


Since we wanted to be sure to get to the wedding on time (it was in an area of Seoul that we haven't explored yet) we decided to go with a group of Korean of teachers from the school who were traveling together.  We figured since they could read the signs it would make much more sense to go with them rather than us wander around trying to find the wedding hall.  Well as it turned out they didn't really know where to go either and  we ended up arriving 15 minutes or so after the ceremony had started.  At an American wedding this would have been mortifying. . especially if you were singing in the wedding -- but it didn't really seem to be a big deal here. 


 The wedding hall had a stage area up front similar to where most western wedding are held but the area where guests sat was was made of up of round tables with chairs around them rather than standards pews or rows of chairs.  As a result there was a lot of talking going on and the ceremony didn't really seem to be the main focus for most of the spectators.  My boss at the school (she is Korean American) had warned me that it would probably be noisy and had actually described the wedding halls as working on a type of "assembly line" process where the weddings go on quickly right after each other.


The ceremony was all in Korean so we literally couldn't understand a thing and can't really speak with any kind of authority on how similar the vows where to what would be common in am American wedding.  It was interesting though that the parents actually had seats up on the stage and appeared to be a very important part of the process.  Below you can see the new couple with their parents during the ceremony (the moms are wearing Hanboks or the traditional Korean dress). 

There wasn't a program or list of events (not that we could have read them anyway) so we just sat there not having a clue as to what was going on or when we would be singing until one of the wedding organizers came and tapped us on the shoulder and motioned for us to come up to the stage for the performance.  It went as well as could be expected other than when I mixed up a few of the words and loudly belted out "Moon Drifter" instead of "Moon River".  The good news is there was less than 10 people there who actually understood English well enough to know the difference.

After the wedding they took pictures including one with all the friends of the couple.  And I got to be in it!  The picture is below. . . see if you can find me!  

After the ceremony it was time for the reception.  The reception for Korean weddings basically consists of a very large buffet.  It doesn't include most of the little traditional components to American receptions (cutting the cake, throwing the bouquet, etc) as those were already  incorporated into the ceremony and picturing taking time.  The buffet was also  interesting because the people there can include guests from any of the previous weddings that day (remember the assembly line thing?) so there is really no way to be sure if the people sitting next to you even attending the same wedding that you did or attending a wedding earlier in the day and are just going back for their 7th plate.

The food was amazing though.  Some was amazing in the context of being very good.  Some was amazing in the context of. . well. . just being amazing.