Comparative analysis: Weddings in Asia, Part 1

Last month I had the chance to attend a wedding here in Korea. I've been meaning to blog about it because it was a very strange experience, but never got around to it. But last week I took Thursday and Friday off in order to go to my cousin's wedding in the Philippines, and oh my, what a vastly different experience it was!

So...about this Korean wedding. Nearly half of Koreans do not ascribe to any religion. So perhaps this is why it seems like most weddings to not happen in temples or chapels, but in wedding halls. The wedding hall I went to was this big building - it had an open floor plan with escalator in the middle, and it was maybe 5 or 6 stories tall. I don't remember what the ground floor was like, but the next three floors were identical - when you got off the escalators, there was an open lobby, and on each side, a ceremony room and a small viewing room. This makes it possible for two weddings to occur at the same time. We got off the escalator on the appropriate floor, and then had to maneuver through the crowds of wedding guests to figure out which side we should be on. We found the bride (C's ex-coworker) in the viewing room. Apparently this room is where the bride sits on a thrown in front of a photographer, and all the guests can come in and get their photos taken with her. Being token foreigners, we were ushered in for a photo.

I'd actually heard a lot about the factory produced nature of Korean weddings, and was eager to experience it myself...but I'll admit my first impression was "you know, I kind of get it." I hear so much about how stressful and complicated and expensive wedding planning is, the idea that you just book a location and everything is arranged for you so all you have to do is show up seemed moderately appealing. Post ceremony, I decided that in fact no, I preferred the more stereotypical American wedding. The Korean ceremony was: 1)short 2) cheesy and 3)very impersonal.

First of all, they never closed the doors for the ceremony, so the whole time that the minister (or whomever decrees marriage in Korea) was talking, while the couple was giving their vows, people were walking in and out, chatting, etc. My thought was "no no, people should be paying attention to ME on my wedding day."

The signal for the beginning of the ceremony was some woman covering Savage Garden's To the Moon and Back. Apparently, although I haven't heard that song in maybe 10 years, I still know all the lyrics. When the bride walked down the isle, the music changed to Celine Dion's Power of Love (to all who don't know, this is the song that goes "cuz I'm your laaaaadyyyyyy, and you are my maaaaaaannnnn"). They also had spotlights and disco lights for both the bride and the groom. A smoke machine was puffing fog out from under the cake table during the cake cutting.

I guess you can't really tell from this picture...

The ceremony hall looked as expected:

After the ceremony - which only lasted about 20 minutes, the bride and groom left, and all the guest were invited to make their way to the top floor of the building, where there was a big banquet hall. As a guest of the wedding, you are given a meal ticket, which is collected at the top of the stairs, and then everyone from all the weddings (which I think could be at least 6 total, with 3 floors of 2 ceremony rooms each) converge on this giant buffet. The tables aren't even divided so that one wedding all sits in one place - it was kind of a sit where you can find a seat situation.

Anyhow, congratulations to the happy couple.