Another Wedding, and Spring's Blessed Appearance

So spring has finally sprung! And not a moment too soon, either. It is blessed jacket weather, and I have even worn sandals! As is Korea's pattern, things here are sudden, and it literally just all-of-the-sudden lost its chill. Hallelujah.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to attend my second wedding in Korea, and this was for my gorgeous co-worker Keira. This was a very different experience from Gina's traditional ceremony, in that this is a modern, common Korean wedding. The weddings here are very fast, and this one in particular was held at an establishment I can only think to describe as a "wedding mill". Each room conducts about 8 wedding ceremonies a day lasting about 30 minutes each. When we arrived, the wedding before ours was already in progress, running through exactly the same routine as the one we would soon witness. Pretty perfunctory, with some cute, Vegas-style embellishments, no bridal party, everything perfectly timed and orderly. We were then all ushered down to the buffet floor, where the establishment has a constant flow of food, and wedding party after wedding party comes and goes throughout the day. We were eating and co-mingling with those from the wedding party before ours, and the wedding party after. No wedding cake, no standing in line to greet the bride and groom. And this was all very normal. Before attending this wedding I had already heard that Korean weddings are surprisingly different from Western weddings in that they're very short, and people eat, and then you're done. My co-worker Un-mi who was sitting next to me told me she wants an "American style" wedding where the ceremony has more depth and lasts longer. There are some Koreans who opt for that, but the standard is still the wedding mill.
Kyung-hee and I traveled to the wedding together. She looks oh-so-hip in those shades. She's always stylish, though. She just got back from a vacation in Japan and brought back the coolest clothes.

Here is Kyung-hee again posing by the framed wedding pictures that were unbelievably gorgeous. They take some seriously outstanding wedding pictures here in Korea - 'course, it doesn't hurt that Keira is drop-dead gorgeous and her groom has one of the most charming, contagious smiles I've ever seen.

See what I mean? Straight out of Modern Bride.

Here is the beauty in person. She is posing in a room outside the ceremony hall where people can come in and take pictures with her (see below). I can only imagine how tired here cheeks were by the end of the day.Here is the DYB Crew! I work with all of these lovely ladies at my branch.

This is the ceremony hall before the Vegas style lights and magic. The saxophone player was very good, but looked so bored the whole time. I can imagine it gets old playing the same song for endless weddings!

Here are the groom and bride's mothers dressed in traditional hanbok. Usually, the elder women on both sides wear hanbok, and the men wear suits. The most touching part of the ceremony was when Keira's mother cried after being bowed to my her new son-in-law, which then made Keira teary-eyed. It was very sweet.

Here is the groom!

The bride and groom both walked down the aisle through this heart-shaped flower thingie, which the employees then parted. A little corny, but cute nonetheless.

Now announced man and wife... I think. I don't understand enough Korean to have had much of an idea of what was happening, but methinks these things are pretty standard.

This was my favorite part - the cake. They don't actually eat it, they just ceremonially cut it. As I said, there was no cake at the "buffet" reception, no dancing, none of that Western stuff. But the best part was the multi-colored lights and the dry ice! If you look closely you can see it coming out of the bottom.

I had to miss church to go to the wedding, but I wasn't about to miss my Pamela Time. We met up later in the evening and enjoyed a bottle of wine in this little cafe near my house that I recently discovered. It was open-air, and it was really nice to enjoy these first notes of spring.

Below, I've included my amateur-as-all-get-out video of the traditional wedding song sung to the couple at the end of the ceremony. I thought it was very interesting. You can also see how most of the attendees aren't really paying attention, which was true throughout the ceremony. There was a hum of conversation from start to finish, which, again, is very common. Please enjoy my silly mug at the end of video - if you are not amused, at least I know that I was. :-)