Tying the knot, Korean style!!

My lovely 'Dongseng' 

Firstly, I would like to start this latest post by congratulating my amazing friend Han on her marriage this previous weekend (pics to come), you looked absolutely beautiful! It was so good to see you again and to share your special day with you, your new husband, your family and other friends.

So now you have figured out that this blog’s topic is about: “The Korean Wedding Ceremony”. If you haven’t, we have bigger problems. Korean weddings are something of a spectacle and are bursting with idiosyncrasies that make for brilliant blogging. 

To begin with, Koreans are taking on Western traditions in leaps and bounds, and, while things like Christmas, Easter and Halloween are still lagging behind, a lavish white wedding with all the bells and trimmings is something they have taken on with gusto and unique Korean sense. 

In many cases Koreans have two weddings: a traditional Korean wedding ceremony with Hanboks, age-old ceremonies and symbols; as well as a meringue explosion of white dresses, fake flowers and plenty of flash photography. Being in the region of about 10 million won  ($10,000 USD) for a basic package of everything rental, buffet for about 300, and the ceremony being dusted in about 40 minutes flat, they are sometimes referred to as “factory weddings”.

Here’s a breakdown, minute by minute, of some of the strangeness and idiosyncrasies that I experienced. This was compounded by not knowing exactly what was being said most of the time, and with an imagination like mine this is somewhat dangerous, if not entertaining!

Timeline: 

Since the invite said that the wedding will commence at 13:00…I arrived at

12:40…naturally! This is where the timeline shall start.

12:40 – arrive at ‘Happy Wedding’ wedding hall.  With more bling than Cher could fit on a dress the blinding glits and shine of the entrance hall was enough to make you think you were walking towards the great white light. 

12:41 – search for the wedding party/people I know. (In wedding halls there can be up to 4 weddings occurring at a given time, which means one hall can churn out about 16 weddings a day)

12:50 – still searching.

12:55 – wonder if I am in the right place.

12:57 – finally find a friend and realise never to arrive early to a Korean wedding.

12:58 – move into the designated wedding hall and stare in awe (and quite a bit of disbelief) at the venue.

Lights, mirrors, action!

  

   Quick description

- Colourful fluorescent lighting.

- Mirrored, catwalk-like aisle.

- Fake flowers

13:00 – Respective mothers of the couple walk down the aisle. You can tell who is who because the mother of the bride typically wears a pink hanbok and the mother of the groom wears a blue hanbok.

13:01 – bride appears looking STUNNING!! Music plays, and she walks down the mirrored catwalk/aisle toward her husband-to-be to a round of applause. I try not to cry.

13:02 – Ceremony begins. Parents of the bride and groom are seated in their own thrones next to the couple. MC is shouting things over the microphone.

The LOUD old ladies!

13:04 – He is still shouting things.

13:05 – The group of Ajumas (permed and sequined old aunties) in front of me start up the loudest conversation EVER. This seems to be okay and accepted behaviour, and people come and go and chatter while the ceremony takes place.

13:07 – The minister/priest does his thing, the old ladies are still gaggling loudly.

13:20 – The minister finishes doing his thing, the old ladies still doing theirs.

13:21 – MC starts shouting things and the newlyweds respond appropriately.

Summary of ‘appropriate responses’

-

Groom not visible, he is on the floor

Bow to the bride’s parents: the groom does a FULL bow on hands and knees with his head touching the mirrored floor.

*more shouting*

I don’t understand what is going on, so I look around at the colourful fluorescent lighting reflecting off the shiny, shiny surfaces everywhere and admire the abundance of fake flowers.

*MC still shouting*

Taking front row to a new level.

The couple now turns to face the bride’s parents in their front row, box seats.

*You guessed it, more shouting*

Turn to face groom’s parents (also have special seats).

*MC shouts AGAIN*

Bow to them too, again the groom finds himself with his forehead on the mirror floor. This as it turns out, is where the bride is “given away” and officially moves from her parents and her family, to her husband and her new family. The couple bow giving thanks for raising a good daughter, and the bride bows to be accepted into the new family and promise to excel at all things wife-related.

Now they turn and face the assembly of people.

*MC seems to be trying to embarrass the groom by shouting something at him*

Groom looks suitably embarrassed and shouts something back…

*MC shouts

Everybody laughs (except for me and 1 other foreigner)

The groom assumes a push-up position.

The bride sits on his back.

Bridal push-up.  Domination begins!

He lowers his body to the ground while shouting her name.

He completes the push-up with her on his back and shouts “I LOVE YOU” in Korean.

He does this 4 times (every time because the MC shouts at him)…bear in mind the man is wearing gloves and doing push-ups on a mirror, while his new wife is sitting

on him!

 

The bottom 2 tears are FAKE.
(and the cake cutting has
already been completed)

13:26 – Cutting of the cake.

-

Now this is traditionally the cute part where the couple holds the knife together and cuts the first slice and feed each other a bite, right? Right???

In Korea it seems that they don’t do the latter. They literally only cut the cake, not a slice, ONE cut into it – done. 

-

13:27 – Crowd starts making an unashamed run for the buffet: the noisy old ajumas are out the doors first.

13:27 – Al is confused why people are running out while the bride and groom are still posing for pics, which the photographer will make them do again and again until it’s right.

13:28 – Only a few people hanging around to take pics with the bride and groom.

13:30 – Wedding is pretty much over, and wedding hall employees are already cleaning up the venue for the next couple.

13:44 – I have my wedding gift. (2 wooden ducks and 50 000won).  The ducks are the traditional Korean wedding gift and have a ton of symbolism behind them. The cash is the normal gift, 30 000won ($30) for ‘randoms’, 50 000won ($50) for friends, and 100 000won ($100) for relatives.  I think I should get married here just to make some ‘ching’.

All you can eat/drink...

13:45 – Buffet. I hit that HARD! More food and drinks than you can stomach, and we were at the buffet longer than the actual wedding!

14:30 – food coma sets in.

*Somewhere between the ceremony and the buffet the bride and groom leave for their honeymoon in the Philippines and a lifetime of happiness.*

Roll out of the buffet and head home.

And so, I can add a very sweet and extremely different type of wedding to my list of nuptial experiences. And, as I discovered, even Koreans go to weddings for the food ;)

magic numbers...have a look you might need them

Hi there all you whegugins! (That's "foreigners" for those of you who managed to get your mouth around that word) 

Just in case you are as SPAZ as I am sometimes, and just in case you need help at some point in the land of kimchi and soju, here is a special number that you might find useful. In fact, it may save your life:

  

                                              02-120                                  

This magical number is the information equivalent of 911 and you can dial it for help IN ENGLISH when you find yourself in the Seoul area. You can call this number for practically ANYTHING from finding bus numbers, directions, timetables for transport, finding English doctors, translation... JUST ABOUT ANYTHING!

As an example, here is a tale about my friend Tric-Trac*, my amazingly awesome friend. One weekend, on an epic soju-fuelled bender with friends, Trac somehow found herself alone in the Itaewon subway station bathroom and minus her handbag. Inside the handbag was her wallet with money, bank cards, and the all important Alien Card you are pretty much crippled without when it comes to replacing your life in cards. To this day she still does not remember how she got there or how the handbag left her, but that is a tale for her to tell at another time.

Fortunately she had her cellphone in her pocket and in the phone was saved the magical number. This is where the story takes an amazing turn, especially for us South African peeps. It turns out that a Korean woman had found her handbag and turned it in to the local police station. They then used her details to contact her. Given that this was all in Korean, she recruited the friendly elves at 02-120 and they translated the whole situation between the police and her. After what seemed like millions of moderated phonecalls, the police station COURIERED the handbag back to Trac, who lives a little over an hour away from Seoul, FOR FREE! When she got her handbag back just a few days after losing it, NOTHING had been touched inside the bag... cards, money and identification all intact! 

So this story has two morals, 1) beware of soju, 2) 02-120 can save your life.  (Koreans are so honest its mind boggling!)

For all the other whegugins who are so unfortunate to be living in the sticks somewhere, that's too bad, you're screwed. Just teasing, here is a list of numbers you can use to get yourself some help, all in English of course:

- Hide quoted text -

[Area Codes] Dial your area code followed by 1330

Area	Number
Seoul	(0)2
Gyeonggi	(0)31
Incheon	(0)32
Gangwon	(0)33
Chungnam	(0)41
Daejeon	(0)42
Chungbuk	(0)43
Busan	(0)51
Ulsan	(0)52
Daegu	(0)53
Gyeongbuk	(0)54
Gyeongnam	(0)55
Jeonnam	(0)61
Gwangju	(0)62
Jeonbuk	(0)63
Jeju	(0)64

Of course these numbers do depend on you actually having a phone in the first few months of your stay when you are most likely to need translation! However, in one of the most advanced telecom nations in the world, you can still find good ol fashioned coin phones in subway stations and other public spaces.

Hope this golden information helps cut down on the amount of time you stand staring at maps and lost in translation

*amazingly awesome, fiercely loyal, party-loving-soju-crazed, queen of all skanks (all hail queen Trashy), editorial genius, roll-on-the-floor-clutching-your-belly-laughing-at-things-inappropriate, beautiful, YOUNG lady with infectious smile, friend!

PARADISE ISLAND

So, desperately attempting to hit the 'reset' button on my body-clock for taking the edge off the jet-lag that I foresee in my very near future, I’ve decided to fight off the eye-droop by writing a new blog entry.  While pondering what to share with you guys, the excitement of my travels got the better of me, which is lucky for you otherwise you'd be reading about how in Korean public toilets you don't flush the poo-paper but instead toss it in a bin in the corner of the stall. No bait!! 

The surges of realising I will find myself in Africa very soon, combined with excited travel giddiness, got me thinking about previous intrepid adventures I have been on, and there is ONE particular tale that I want to share with you...

During my previous stint in SoKo (South Korea for those of you who still haven't figured that one out), a gang of friends and I decided to go on an impromptu little getaway.  Since we only had a long weekend free we opted to 'keep it local' and find a Korean retreat of sorts *. With great excitement and gusto, we convened at a central Korean restaurant armed with little more than enthusiasm and a Lonely Planet Korea.  For those of you who know me, you know that I am so indecisive that even the most mundane decisions are not easy to make.  So, to find myself with 5 other people, none of whom could even choose something off the menu let alone a weekend destination, it was an undertaking to say the least!  In the final slurps of whatever "국" ( guk >soup) it was we were chowing, Philly, the lovely, young farm-girl with the drinking capacity of a hardened pirate, finally convinced us of our destination: “Paradise Island”. Holy SMAKRIL she sold it to us like a pro, we took the pitch hook, line and sinker! Paraphrasing HEAVILY from her dog-eared Lonely Planet she declared 파라다이스 아일랜드 고고씽  (Paradise Island GO GO SING!!) was an adventure worthy of future story-telling.

With a spring in our step (and in a bit of a hurry because we stopped for Ben to buy the most ridiculously luminous shirt on the premise that every magical island holiday needs a ridiculous shirt, right?), we get to the train/bus station with minutes to spare. We line up and purchase our holiday extravaganza tickets: bus tickets... to an ISLAND.  That should have been the first warning sign that things were not about to go to plan!! *Danger Danger* Each person had to cough up a whopping 1700 Korean Won for their ticket (which is just less than $2 (US) or about R10 (ZAR) *DANGER *DANGER). 

Happily seated on the bus, travelling near the speed of light, we crossed over just about the longest bridge ever constructed.  It was round about then that Philly grew a little pale, and as it turns out, not just because she was fighting off the strong smell of 김치 (kim chi > fermented cabbage) in our economy (only) class seats. Why?? She read the second paragraph of the insert on “Paradise Island", which went a little something like this:

" Taking the ferry across to this rather heinous Island you will be swarmed by the rats of the sky.  Thousands of ravenous seagulls will black out the sun and fight over whatever you choose to throw overboard.  Please keep your children safe…"

Did she mention this? No, she just giggled a little as it was too late to turn back and she didn't want to spoil our excitement...not yet! 

After an epic 7 and a half minute bus ride we were at the port to take the ferry. It turns out the ferry fee was included in the 1700 Won...*DANGER DANGER*. True as BOB, the seagulls were there too waiting for the same ferry. Budget travel aside, the short trip across the water was rather pleasant, when we were able to ignore the septic tank stench rising from the water, the deafening drone of the engine (not even music on your MP3 could block it out), screaming children, and swarms of seagulls straight out of Hitchcock's "Birds".

Finally making landfall, it was time to continue with our epic island adventure, but first we needed a little something to calm our frayed nerves. Luckily for us, there was a ridiculous pub shaped like a Viking ship at the dock, convenient right? In hindsight islanders must have realize that people who visit need all the ‘Dutch courage’ they can muster to get through their stay. *DANGER DANGER*.

Able to explain away the weird pub as a tourist gimmick, we were met by another DANGER sign: more congestion and traffic jams than I have ever seen in my 26 years of existence. We thought that the island obviously had to be highly rated if traffic was crawling along at about 1km per 2 hours! Clearly something amazing was going down here if half of Korea had the same idea to come? This is where we may have found the 3^rd paragraph from the Lonely Planet useful… Paraphrasing again: If your ovaries have packed up or your little swimmers can make it to the egg this island is just for you!  A quick trip up the ‘penis mountain’ might be all it takes. This fertility island, overflowing with penis key rings and cock curios, has the magical power of making the barren fruitful again.

Yes friends, we found ourselves on a “fertility” island with droves of very desperate Koreans seeking to halt the birthrate nose-dive facing the nation. Secure in our belief that we needed no help with fertility, Megs, my insanely funny friend and I, decided to stay at the Viking ship and consume as much 막걸리(Makholi> Korean rice wine) as possible, while the rest of the crowd embarked on a hike up dick hill or cock mound or whatever it was called, just “for interest sake”. 

The rice wine that made everything OKAY!

Megz's willy keyring. Lucky girl! hahahaha

Four hours, 1 giant traffic jam, 4 bottles of rice wine and 3000 penis sightings later, we were all reunited at the Viking ship. Realising it was getting late and that there were thousands of Koreans on the island about put into practice the Island’s claim of fertility, we knew that it would be difficult to find a place to sleep that night. And difficult it WAS!

After a couple of hair-raising and unfruitful taxi rides to nearby hotels, we ourselves became desperate and finally made our way to the less exclusive “love motels”. The first one we entered had a high school boy offer his translation abilities to us, telling us that there were “ABSOLUTELY no more rooms available”. In retrospect this was immediately after he jumped the queue to translate for us and sneakily booking the last room for himself.

Starting to feel like a biblical bunch of inn-seekers, and ready to throw our bags down in places even less comfortable than a stable, we finally found some luck. This luck was in the form of a very dodgy motel with the angriest lady you have ever come across behind the counter. She actually reminded me of the lady who reads the News on the North Korean propaganda channels *DANGER DANGER*, but that’s a story for another time. (If you don’t know what I am talking about 'youtube' it, it is HILARIOUS). Beggars can’t be choosers right? And making our way down the corridors stacked with bookshelves full of naughty VCR cases, it started to dawn on us that this was not the holiday we thought it would be.

By this time we were hungry, and quite baffled with how Philly had managed to sell this holiday to us, so we decided to go for dinner. Now, most restaurants were as packed as the hotels, but we managed to find a place that had space for us to eat. *DANGER DANGER* The place smelled more like a pet shop than a restaurant. After our “meal” we desperately needed a drink, but since the restaurant wasn’t exactly top-notch dining, our hopes of finding a bar/pub capable of numbing the senses a bit was looking slim. Good thing we didn’t get our hopes up either, because there was NO pub anywhere.  The only form of entertainment that was not related to procreation were “claw machines” with their array of tacky prizes. There were so many, in fact, that we started to wonder whether they were somehow related to fertility!  Some being easy to amuse (TOM), threw half their salaries at the yellow monstrosities. And considering they only cost 200 Won per go, that’s quite a lot of entertainment/disappointment.

Crazed by the machine

In a last beat attempt to make the most out of our trip, we opted to go convenient store hopping. In Korea it’s perfectly legal to sell beer, makholi, wine, as well as the infamous magical green bottles of slightly diluted ethanol known as소주 (Soju). Better yet, these convenience stores also offer snacks, noodles, free use of their kettle and microwave, and plastic seating outside within arms’ reach of the claw machines. After all, it’s not called “Family Mart” for nothing.

This is where the fun and games all began...finally!! 

Finally with things looking a bit better (everything looks at least a bit better after some soju), we started to relax and enjoy ourselves. Drinks, games and claw machine championships were going just swell… until about 3:30am. Round about that time two of the fertility seekers residing in one of the love motels emerged looking like they had been dragged out of a bush backwards.  After stocking up with soju and enough dried squid to feed a small village for a week, they decided to join us and we welcomed them with open arms. Only when the couple sat down did we all notice at the same time that the lady had FREAKISHLY small hands. It was like a baby’s hands had been attached to a tall, grown woman’s arms. We are not people to judge, but this caused a table-wide awkward glance at each other. 

Just then, breaking the awkwardness of involuntarily analysing the woman’s proportions, a guy ran past the store along the main road. A few seconds later another guy ran past, then another. Before we knew it there was a full on marathon going on. Disregarding the time, us “slightly” intoxicated penis island holiday makers took the opportunity to cheer and shout loudly, offering hearty support in our most fluent Korean.

Moved by our display of support, the lady with the freakishly small hands offered me some dried squid to nosh on. This is when things took a turn for the worse. I politely declined, and explained to her that I was a vegetarian (I didn’t explain to her that her hands also freaked me out enough not to eat anything from them).  She did not care much for my excuses and wanted to me to eat squid. No. Matter. What.  After the 4^th time of saying “no thank you” in Korean, she used those little carni hands of hers to grip the squid and proceeded to beat me with it. Between the Soju and the shock, I was struck a few times on the head before I realized what was happening. Because I am a gentleman who would never strike a lady, especially one who couldn’t fight back with micro fists, my solution in that moment was to get up and sprint away. Not believing my eyes, she got up and gave chase!

And so there I was: 3:30 in the morning, pickled with soju, weaving my way through a maze of marathon runners (who thought I was mad for not knowing how to pace oneself in a marathon), trying my best to outrun a crazed squid-wielding, carni-handed woman. Who could ever have envisioned such a scene as we merrily agreed to descend on “Paradise Island” just that same day?

Suffice to say that there was no way we were staying another night, and that paradise island had lost its charm. The next day we were on the first gull-infested ferry back to the mainland and on the first bus back home. The weekend’s misfortunes were not finished following us though: the bus driver hit a guy on a scooter on the way home. In true Korean bus driver style, he got out of the bus, shouted at the guy he hit, got back in and drove us home.

Luckily for us we still had a full weekend to relax and recover after that!

 * In hindsight and with the guidance of "Cockdog" (that's her middle name, shame), I have realise that a weekend trip to China is more than doable, and should probably have also been on the cards. Although, if our luck panned out the way it did when in China, we’d probably still be there, earning the privilege to make our first phone call.