Weddings in South Korea are a different experience for westerners in attendance, says Andrew Farrell
Even before the groom marched down the aisle at breakneck speed, with classical music blaring in the background, I knew my first Korean wedding would be the biggest cultural experience of my eight months in the country.
By and large, weddings here take place in huge halls, with several happening simultaneously. It’s like a production line for married couples, and the contrasts from Ireland could not be more obvious.
This wedding – which took place on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April – was for a Korean co-worker. There were over a thousand people in the foyer checking the directory to see which one of the five floors was hosting their wedding. We were looking for the ‘Kim wedding’, which, if you know anything about Korea, is not the most helpful information.
On the third floor we found the bride in a tiny, secluded room at the entrance to the hall where her wedding would begin at 12:45 sharp, no delays. She sat on a chair fit for a queen with images of a forest on the wall behind her. The guests filed in with cameras ready, offering good wishes. She smiled brightly, but even before the wedding had taken place, one could tell she was drained from the experience. I couldn’t help but feel she was merely on show for her family and friends, like an artwork at a museum.
The mothers of the bride and groom wore a traditional Korean dress called a hanbok. The bride was in a more familiar western-style wedding dress, while the groom was sharply attired in a white jacket and black pants.
The mothers walked the aisle first, followed by the groom. By the time the bride reached the altar, the two parents were already seated in plush furniture at an angle from the minister. Plumes of fog from a smoke machine covered the ground around their feet. It seemed more mythical than ceremonial.
And that’s not to mention the team of helpers dressed like flight attendants, whose duty was to improve the visual spectacle of the wedding. Often they would wave huge bouquets of flowers above the bride’s head, while another followed close behind her, fixing her dress whenever it needed to be.
In Korean weddings, the bride and groom don’t just stand in front of the minister. In fact, they are required to move around a lot, and even sing karaoke-style, which had the wedding party on their feet in applause – and provoked gasps of astonishment from the foreign contingent. Despite the regularity of weddings here, most of the 13 foreign staff at my school had never been to a Korean wedding before.
Weddings here last about 30 minutes, and are wrapped up shortly after the cake is rolled out on a trolley. The bride and groom pose for a picture, just one of many during the ceremony, and the cake is swiftly wheeled off again.
One of their last engagements before drifting off to the enormous food court for the wedding dinner is for photographs with co-workers. With the bride and groom’s colleagues, there must have been at least 60 people crowding into the shot!
The best part, however, was when the photographer noticed a Korean standing at the back. He stepped back from his camera, waving his arms furiously in the air. After laughs and jeers, the Korean moved towards the front of the crowd, and the eyes and laughs were on us. We later asked what had happened; apparently the back row “is for foreigners only”.
Andrew Farrell is working as an English language teacher in Korea
