"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet."
-Mae West
I used to quite enjoy starting essays with a quotation. It was a like a "Get Out of Writing an Introductory Sentence Free" card, so I've decided to revisit this pastime, though with a lot less than a grade hinging on its reception.
As you may have deduced, the topic of this blog will be . . . marriage! Or, more specifically, weddings. Korean weddings, to be precise.
Despite having worked here only three months (to the DAY, in fact), I was invited to attend my coworker's wedding this past Sunday. Don't be fooled--just because it was held on a Sunday doesn't mean it was a religious ceremony. In fact, the word "wedding" might be throwing you off a bit here, too, if you're imagining anything like the weddings you have attended in your western part of the world. It was nothing like Princess Di's wedding, so just please, just stop picturing that. Stop it.
I felt a bit awkward being invited in the first place, but I was told that it is standard to invite all of your coworkers to a wedding here, so I embraced the cultural difference and prepared myself to attend. But first I needed some questions answered.
This particular coworker, English name "Heather," has a son who attends Hanyang Oregon preschool. He is one of my favorite students, and almost ludicrously intelligent. We hang out a lot in the teacher's room, where he enjoys playing with the translator widget on my laptop and looking up maps of different countries. In the U.S., I wouldn't question the fact that a woman who is about to get married already has a five-year-old child, but in South Korea it is a bit of an oddity. Women's roles are changing here, but I have gathered that they are expected to remain abstinent until marriage.
So. Had Heather been widowed? It was a possibility, though she didn't seem like the tragically widowed type. Had she been raising Sam as a single mother out of wedlock? That would be almost unheard of in South Korea. These weren't questions I could directly pose to Heather, so Angela and I had to wait until we could corner another Korean coworker, Luke, about the details. Like any polite Korean, we asked the question indirectly.
-So Luke, are you excited for the wedding tomorrow?
-I don't know. Maybe.
-Luke, we have a question for you.
-Ah . . . no, no, no.
-You already know what we're going to ask you?
-No . . . Well . . . about Heather? (Nervous laughter).
-Yes. Could you, uh, tell us about that?
-I don't know. No. Well. Okay.
Luke proceeded to give us a far more detailed account of why Heather has a son before being married than we possibly could have expected. Apparently, Heather has been legally married for years, on account of what we Americans might refer to as a "shotgun wedding." Luke informed us that, after watching a World Cup game several years ago, Heather and her then-boyfriend went to a "love motel" and . . . well, Luke just clapped his hands together at this point, but you get the idea. Heather became pregnant with Sam and, without an official ceremony, the kids got married. Now, years later, they decided to do it the old-fashioned way, before friends, family, and coworkers they hardly know.
What baffles me about this story is that, in this somewhat repressed society, a coworker might know the intimate details of your child's conception, but when asked at a work-dinner if they are drunk (while the soju has been flowing, mind you), a Korean will merely respond, " . . . Maybe?"
Bah. Never mind all that. The important part of all this is to inform you of how bizarre the actual wedding was. I met my coworkers at the subway station, which we took to a stop where we could catch a shuttle bus, which took us to . . . "The Wedding Castle."
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That is exactly what it sounds like. I wish I had pictures, but my camera ate its batteries and those things aren't as readily available here as they are in the U.S. The best way I can describe The Wedding Castle is to say, imagine if Las Vegas and Disneyland had a merger. This place would be the result.
Towering over us as we exited the bus was a castle fit for Sleeping Beauty, the Seven Dwarves, and Aladdin combined. Chandeliers and fake Greek columns decked the halls, and we ascended the staircase to the viewing room, where Heather sat on a veritable throne having her picture taken with anyone who might happen to pass by.
People milled about the hallways, but these people were not all guests for Heather's wedding. At least three weddings occurred during the span of an hour and a half at this wedding hall, kind of like a Ford assembly line for marriage. Nobody knew who belonged where.
Unbeknownst to me, the ceremony began suddenly (with or without an announcement, it's hard to say), and so, too, began the theatrics of a Korean wedding. The room in which the ceremony was held was smaller than most churches but larger than most waiting rooms. It felt a bit like both. People moved about and talked as if they were attending an ice cream social. Children fidgeted and played with the flower arrangements. Heather sat at the back of the aisle in yet another throne, looking more demure than usual.
And then the show began.
Cue the dance music. And the light show. I am not making this up. Multi-colored lights flashed and waved about as the bride walked down the aisle of raised glass that hovered above flower petals lit from below. And then the fog machines went off. In case the lights and music hadn't cued people in on the fact that the bride was walking down the aisle, there were fog machines to announce, "Here! Here she is! Look over here!" I felt like a child seeing snow for the first time.
The rest of the ceremony was short, 25 minutes tops, and I didn't understand a lick of it as it was all, of course, conducted in Korean. Afterwards, we were rushed upstairs for a buffet lunch, where we ate a strange variety of food and handed the bride some money in an envelope. You don't give gifts at weddings here, just money.
In a way, the whole thing got me to thinking, why DO Americans tend to insist that their wedding is the most important day of their life? Why not just say, screw it, let's pretend like we're at Disneyland and throw our guests a kooky party?
I should hope that your wedding isn't the best day of your life, because that means it's all downhill from there. Eesh.
Still, the whole artificial feel of the wedding wasn't too appealing, either. I'm not sure I'm going to be jumping on the Korean-style wedding bandwagon any time soon.
Maybe Vegas and Disneyland should band together and create an authentic-feeling, intimate brand of wedding ceremony that they could market to people who are sick of commercialism and artifice.
I bet there would be a lot of money in that.
A vastly uncomfortable sleeping station until I was struck by the idea to buy a new comforter and use the old one as a mattress pad. Now this is where I have the occasional dream of my students attacking me. The slanted ceiling creates excellent acoustics for rain. 
