Setting

This blog follows myself and my Korean fiance as we search for a suitable place for our wedding. I say 'suitable' because we are both quite particular about how and where we want to get married.

When: April 2008

Where: Incheon or Seoul

Venue: wedding garden or a traditional building.

How: purely British white wedding in a wedding garden, or a purely Korean traditional wedding in a traditional building.

Why:

• we cannot afford two weddings.
• wedding halls are tacky
• hotels are too expensive
• Korean churches are too ugly

We must have:

• enough space for at least 200 people to sit down and watch the wedding
• witnesses must be seated in rows, not at dinner tables during the actual ceremony
• the area must be private
• some kind of wedding party, preferably in the same place
• Songsu's mother's priest to marry us
• Real wedding vows to say to one another, not just listen to the priest and say 'ne' (yes).
• If it is a white wedding, we need bridesmaids....and bridesmaids' dresses.
• If it is a white wedding, a small traditional wedding after the first ceremony.
• All the guests get a piece of the wedding cake (white wedding).
• Buffet must cater for both Korean and Western tastes.

Some of what I have listed are things that are taken for granted as part of a western wedding but are difficult to get here in Korea. This is frustrating because Koreans usually have 'white weddings' as they want to copy the western style wedding, but they have omitted so many important elements of the wedding. Thus the so-called western wedding is very Koreanised.

The worst characteristics about the Korean White Wedding is that the whole event usually takes about 1.5 hours (that's the wedding ceremony plus the dinner). If this is not bad enough, usually the place is set up like a dinner show rather than a wedding. We are talking witnesses sat at dinner tables, not in rows, banners and flyers and a powerpoint presentation of the happy couple on the wall. Due to poor acousitics the bride and groom, and the person who is marrying them have to talk into a microphone.

It is our mission to cut out the commercialism and make it more romantic. Let's see how many of the above list we can achieve!