Korean Wedding

Hello! So I know its been a really long time, but my daily routine is just so...normal. I'm sorry :( Anyway...awhile back I went to my co-teacher's wedding. I was so excited to finally have a chance to attend a wedding here because I had been invited to several but could never attend because I was always traveling (surprise!).

I invited my friend Sammy along, who had just arrived in Korea. I figured it would be a good opportunity to show her a little bit about Korea, plus I didn't want to be the only white person at the wedding..

Wedding hall before the ceremony

In Korea, everyone gets married at a wedding hall. Some people do choose to get married in a church if they're Christian, but primarily weddings take place in halls. And I mean, literally everyone. When planning her wedding, I suggested to my co-teacher that she get married maybe in a nice park in Seoul since the weather would still be nice. She laughed in my face. Nobody gets married anywhere except a wedding hall in Korea. My bad.

Sammy and I arrived at the wedding hall about 30 minutes before the ceremony was to begin. We received a lot of curious looks from people, but I recognized several teachers from my school, and even a few students made the trek to the south side of Seoul for the occasion. Everyone takes pictures before the ceremony so I got in line for my picture with the bride.

The ceremony only lasted about 30 minutes..all of which was in Korean. Most people were talking throughout the ceremony or texting on their phones. Weddings are a really informal affair in Korea. Although people are dressed nicely...their behavior definitely doesn't give the impression that a wedding is very important.

Father walking the bride down the aisle

Mid-ceremony

After the ceremony, everyone went downstairs to the dining room. The meal was buffet style..and we were mixed in with the guests from other weddings. Since weddings are so short in Korea, as soon as one wedding is over, the next wedding is ushered in. It sort of has that Vegas shotgun feel to it. I couldn't really tell her guests from the guests of other weddings, so Sammy and I sat with some of the other English teachers from my school so we would be able to have conversations without using wild hand gestures or speaking like 3-year-olds.

The food was pretty good. It was a good mix of Korean and western food, plus there was a giant dessert buffet which was what most of my meal consisted of. There were also some crazy fruits which we later figured out were called "rambutan". They look like big hairy meatballs, but once you peel that part away, there's a really sweet little fruit inside. They were surprisingly really good. They scared me at first, but lesson learned: don't judge a book by its cover.

Eating the scary fruit

With the bride and groom in their traditional Korean "hanbok"

So that's all for the wedding. No travel plans in the immediate future but I WILL be home for Christmas! Hopefully in the spring I'll be able to travel more, though :)

Sorry if the formatting of this entry is a little messed up. I'm on a stupid Samsung computer, and in my opinion any other than a Mac is impossible to use. So I really don't know what I'm doing on this thing. Plus all my menu options are in Korean so its a lot of educated guessing as to what I'm clicking on.

Completely unrelated...I can now rap in Korean.

Here's the latest from my favorite girl group 2NE1...its called "박수쳐" (Bak Su Chyeo) - it means "Clap Your Hands". Enjoy!

"Those who know nothing of foreing languages know nothing of their own." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe