Malos Meet Korea: Not Your Traditional Wedding

On Saturday, April 3, we attended the wedding of the son of one of Doug's CNU colleagues. He (Dr. Lee) paid to take two bus loads of staff and students from Daejeon to Seoul by express bus. We left at 11:30 am for 3 pm wedding. We were served a meal on the bus and arrived in Seoul with 14 lanes of traffic and lots of people. Seoul has 23 million people and is the 2nd largest city in the world. One-half of the South Korean population lives here. The wedding was held in the banquet room of a 5-star Korean Hotel. The room itself was incredibly elegant - huge bouquets on every table - tables that had been set for 300 guests. In Korea anyone can perform the wedding vows and the groom had a professor perform the marriage ceremony. The bride and groom wore western style clothing while the mothers of the bride and groom wore traditional Korean dresses. "Korean appetizers" ( translation - rice cakes), and beverages were on the table and we ate those during the ceremony. Meanwhile, three professional photographers took pictures - walking in and out with the couple, going up on the platform during the ceremony, walking around the couple and snapping pictures while standing 3 to 5 feet from the couple throughout the entire ceremony. We noticed a number of people came and sat down during and even after the ceremony was over. The main meal was served after the ceremony and it was served incredibly fast. Three hundred invited guests and all were seved within five minutes of each other. (Servers everywhere!) We were served rolls, a seafood salad, soup, fillet mignon, salmon, noodles, vegetables, kimchee, and cheesecake for dessert. (Fairly "western", with noodles and kimchee thrown in for the asian palette.) It's worth noting that no one needs to respond to the invitation to say whether or not they'll be coming.Consequently,you plan and pay for the number of guests you initially invite, NOT the number that actually attend. Obviously a potential problem ,especially if the meal is an expensive one.We were told the cost of the meal for this wedding would probably run $60 to $100/person. With a guest list of 300...Mmmmm. This was a costly affair!