Second Korean Wedding

In January I went to the wedding of another of my coworkers. Korean weddings kill me. The first one wasn't too bad, just a little different in terms of having an emcee commentate the whole ceremony and people not sitting down and shutting up for the whole thing and a couple other minor aspects. But it seems to me that a wedding should be special. This second wedding was about the least special event I could imagine.

The wedding was in the Munsu Wedding Hall, by the soccer stadium. I went into the place and found that there were dozens of weddings going on at the same time, with new ones starting every ten or twenty minutes. I had to visit an info desk (well, two actually) to find out which room to go to, and when I got there I still wasn't sure I was in the right place. I was a few minutes late because it took so long to get a taxi, and people were all crowded around in the area outside the wedding room. I couldn't see the face of the bride, and the professional photos outside the hall of the bride and groom looked totally unfamiliar. Also, I didn't see anyone I knew from work.

This is what that area looked like, except most of the crowd was behind me:





Here's what the wedding looked like from outside, which is where I had to stay for the rest of the ceremony, since the inside was full:


I think about as many people were inside sitting down as were outside, not really watching the ceremony. I ended up deciding I was in the right place, but wasn't enjoying myself too much, not being able to see and not being interested anyway. Luckily Korean weddings are short, and the ceremony ended about 20 minutes after I arrived. At this point, professional photographers and guests were able to take photos:



A large group of the guests, including all of us teachers who showed up from Kate LA, were in a photo with the bride and groom. I don't have a copy of that, of course.

After the pictures were done, the couple retired and the guests took their buffet tickets downstairs for lunch. This was also a very unspecial facet of the event, as guests from all the weddings that finished within the same time frame were mixed in the same room and the same buffets. Leon (who overslept and didn't get there until the wedding was over) and I had to stand and eat with spoons, as there were no chopsticks left when we got in line, and no seats available at first when we had gotten our food. After a few minutes, a couple people near the column where we were standing left, and we got to sit down.



I wasn't too pleased with the buffet, but it was free food, so I filled up as best I could. We also had to rush out of there, because we had to get to a movie that we had tickets to. I've noticed that moviegoing has become a more popular activity here in Ulsan over the past several months; almost every time I go to the cinema now, any movies I want to see is sold out for the next four hours, or the next two days or something. It's kind of ridiculous. So this time I had tried to get tickets for us the day before and had to settle for a showtime almost dangerously close to the wedding end time. We made it in time, though.

In sum, I hope I don't have to go to any more Korean weddings.