Korean Wedding

I've already mentioned about some reasons behind Korean blind dates, Sogaeting. Now I'm going to introduce you to the next step: marriage!

I personally have never attended a Korean wedding, but I'll tell you some facts based on a book called „Sleepless in Seoul“ by Vera Hohleiter. Before I start, I tell you that I don't think all of the facts written below apply to all Korean weddings. I'm sure some people do it different way.

The most of Korean people marry in huge halls, decorated with flowers. In such halls you can invite a huge amount of guests: hundreds of them. Civil wedding or church wedding is possible, but it's not that common.

Like mentioned before, there are hundreds of guests, sometimes even more than a thousand. Everyone, who knows about the wedding and wants to bless the couple, can come. Of course, the couple also want them to come.

Homeless people used to go to wedding events because there they could get food for free. Today weddings in Korea can be considered as.. 'business'. A wedding with hundreds of guests costs between 25,000 and 50,000 USD.

In Korea it's not common to give household items or furnishings as presents. Usually people give money in an envelope in en entrance of the wedding hall. Mostly the guests give 50,000 Won, which is about 40 USD. Probably students give a bit less and wealthy guests a bit more.

A relative of the bridal pair counts and manages the money and write the exact amount of all guests down. So if you give a certain amount of money to the bridal pair, most probably you'll get the same amount of it from them on your own wedding. In Korean weddings it's almost all about 'give and take'. More guests means more money.

Probably some of you know such tradition too from your own culture in your country. As for me as an Indonesian, many people there celebrate their weddings in huge halls too, with lots of guests and you also can give money to the bridal couple. But I don't think we consider it as 'business'. Seriously, writing the exact amount of money of each guest is a bit too much, don't you think?