Two Weddings and a Festival

Where to begin?! So very very behind because we’ve been so busy doing things it hasn’t left any time to write about them! There is a lot to tell so I’ll try and keep each thing brief but informative.

I’ll start with the weddings. I went to 2 in as many weeks and even though what I witnessed was the “Western ceremony”, it was quite different to what I know of weddings back home. The first of the two was Dave’s principle’s son’s, and the second, which Dave didn’t attend, was my co-teacher’s (the woman at school who is in charge of looking after me). I already tried writing this briefly and it didn’t work so I’m going to have to write in bullet points – I’ll just mention the things that were…different…

★    Wedding 1: In the foyer there were 5 or 6 big prints of the bride and groom, all very posed and airbrushed, some wearing wedding outfits, others looking casual in jeans, matching t-shirts and geeky glasses. I thought it was pretty cheesy but the photos were well done and Dave seemed to like the concept.

★    Before each wedding started, the bride was perched on a throne in a small room, smiling, scared to move in case her makeup fell off, and being gawked at by all the guests. But they were sights to behold. Total Disney princesses, complete with tiaras!

★    Wedding 1: There was a long catwalk down the middle of the wedding hall.

★    Wedding 1: The bride walked down said catwalk to what can only be described as the standard wedding tune (dun-dun-du-duuun…) but with some strange kind of electro-dub-KPOP-“put-a-donk-on-it” thing happening in the background.

★    A large number of guests waited outside the hall and didn’t watch the ceremony at all.

★    All the guests talked throughout the whole thing.

★    At both weddings, the groom serenaded the bride with some kind of cheesy ballad.

★    Wedding 1: The groom had to prove his strength for the honeymoon by doing press-ups on the catwalk…in his tux.

★    He then took his shoe off and ran around the room with it for people to put money in.

★    Most people only seemed to be there for the free food. Ok that’s not so different.

★    It turns out my co-teacher was 3 months pregnant on her wedding day! Luckily for her she didn’t start to show until a couple of weeks later…

★    Wedding 1: We gave a gift of about 30,000₩ (pretty cheap of us) and were given 10,000 back because we weren’t going for the meal after…even though we did! Oops!

★    Wedding 1: All the guests were dressed in dark wintry colours, unlike me who rocked up in a bright orange dress! And they were all dressed really casually, which was lucky for Dave who decided to sport the David Tennant suit-and-trainers ensemble.

Well as you can imagine with all the romance of the weddings and the joy of 2 free lunches, Dave and I were in search of more lovey-dovey activities to fill the glorious spring weekends. So our next stop was Jinhae, home of The World’s Best Blossom Festival (aka Korea’s best). As they say, a picture can show things with images much better than I can write them with words so here is a little sample of what we saw…

Obligatory cheesy picture

Nice blossom picture

Us and some blossom

Dave, Alicia and Chris.
Attempt at an Abbey Road style blossom picture
but Dave just looks "special"

Statue on the way to the navy base.

The day was lovely and we even got to see Korea’s biggest naval base…which involved an hour long walk along a road that was like something out of Scooby Doo – you know, when they are running down a corridor and pass the same vase 5 times? Well it was like that but with trees and driveways and the occasional sailor – anyway we got to the end of the road and hopped on a bus to head back, which ended up taking us through the base. But it wasn't very interesting anyway. It didn't spoil the day though because we got to walk and hold hands and look at blossom and take cheesy photos and even the smell of silkworms couldn't take the magic away.

Note: Silkworms have become my least favourite smell in the world (not just Korea) and I don’t understand why they have to be sold everywhere when I never even see anyone eating them!!!!