My wife got invited to one of the last weddings in her old circle of college friends. The woman in question happened to have caught dropped to bouquet at our wedding. The statue of limitations on Korean bouquets is supposed to be a six month turn around from catching the flowers to getting married yourself, otherwise you are doomed to years of spinsterhood. This woman proved that old superstition wrong and got married.
Since I didn’t know her, I was technically permitted to skip this wedding. It was in Seoul, and at the unreasonably early hour of 11am. Who gets married at 11am? (I’ve been alerted I have a college friend that got married at 9am! That’s crazy!) That meant we needed to get up and catch the bus they provided at 8am! Still, they provided the bus and even gave us easy to eat snacks for the ride.
My wife and I both were very tired on the ride to the wedding. The bus got us to the wedding hall an hour early due to light traffic. We got our pictures taken, then went upstairs to the hall for the ceremony.
Usual Korean weddings are short and tacky. This one took itself seriously and wasn’t that fun. They had a bubble machine, but it was turned off for most of the ceremony. The pastor talked for 30 minutes about love and duty. The couple exchanged vows. People sang, we had to “pray”. It was entirely too much like a real wedding. It might have been my stomach talking though.We eventually met up with one of my wife’s other college friends. They posed for pictures, then we ate at the wedding hall together.
Just to get competitive about it, The food wasn’t as good as ours, but the hall was better decorated. They lacked the gaudy “Neon Pink and Green heart” color scheme of our wedding hall and went for the “understated white with real flowers and candles” look. We had a professional Opera singer at our wedding, so their amateur singers still couldn’t compare. Our food was also a buffet, and much more delicious. Our catering room was bigger too.
After the meal, my wife and her friend chatted about English education for her daughter. Then we passed out again due to the heat on the bus on the ride home back to the apartment. We got back to the apartment in mid-afternoon, which was better since we left early, but we simply passed out again and slept the rest of the day. I’m glad we “got it done” and got back as soon as possible. Had the wedding been later, I’d probably been grouchy about giving up my Saturday to go to a wedding of someone I didn’t know.
This might be the last wedding I’ll have to go to for a while. All my wife’s friends are married now, and none of our relatives will be getting married either. We have one friend in queue, and then we are done. We expect one more person that attended our wedding to get married this year. Looks like our wedding debts have finally been paid off.
