Busy, Busy, Busy!

This post is dedicated to all of my loyal fans out there who post comments and tell me how much my blog rocks! I also love the questions! Keep 'em coming!

So, we resumed our rock lifestyle last weekend (March 8-9). What I mean is, we had plans all weekend and people invited us out and we met new people... Curtis and I were hot commodities!

Saturday morning we got up early to go to a wedding in Seoul. It was Erin's wedding. She is the Korean teacher that started at the same time as we did and she invited us to her house for Lunar New Year. I had gotten fairly close to her because we spent some time out of work together, so it was really awesome to be invited to her wedding. Since she was marrying a guy who's dad is an official in the Korean army, she had her wedding in a special venue that is reserved for military people. When we got there it didn't really look like an army base, but there were people walking on the roads with uniforms and there was noticeably less traffic than elsewhere.

We got there just in time to greet her parents at the door, find some standing room and get comfortable. There were men in uniform down the aisle at equal intervals. Erin was not hidden from sight but instead she was standing at the back of the room with her parents. The moms were called up first and they lit candles. When it came time for the bride and groom Erin kissed her dad at the top of the aisle and walked down with her fiance. As they walked, there was all this electronic fanfare, trumpets and timpani on a synthesizer. They also had fog and bubble machines pumping out the fairy tale effects. It was such a lot of hoopla!

Erin really sad as she walked down the aisle and at first I was concerned that she was not sure about what she was about to do. Then I remembered that Korean brides look sad because they are leaving their parents. There was about a 20 minute speech by a man at the front, but he wasn't done up in any special clothes. In fact, the wedding clothes looked very typical of a western wedding. She was in white, he was wearing a tux. Only the mothers were wearing traditional Korean outfits called hanbok. I learned later that this is the public ceremony and that there is a very small private ceremony after it where everyone wears Hanbok.

Ok, back to the wedding. The man makes his speech but we don't ever notice any vow repeating or anything like that. We also don't see any rings being exchanged. They do announce them husband and wife and they kiss in front of everyone. This is a big deal because Koreans don't typically show affection in public. Everyone hooted and hollered just like in a western wedding. The happy couple stood at the front, Erin was looking much less gloomy. They were serenaded by some close friends. One was a group of 4 guys that did a really good version of a love song I've heard on the radio. Then the MC asks the groom to perform several feats of strength to prove his worthiness. I kinda thought it was too late for that after they had already been married, hehehe. He even is asked to do squats holding his new bride! Yikes! Poor Erin almost went down in her beautiful dress! On their way back up the aisle, the men in uniform raise their swords, also very fairytale. The bubbles and fog start up again, too. The funniest thing happened at this moment. Each pair of dudes with swords lowered their swords to block the way just before the couple passed. They then asked the groom to shout out all kinds of promises to his bride. My personal favorite was, "I'll treat you good tonight!" Of course my laughter was several minutes after the fact because it had to be translated.

After the public ceremony everyone stood around and had their picture taken with the couple, and I mean everyone! There was even a huge group shot with all of their friends. We then proceeded downstairs for a massive buffet including all the sushi you could ever eat! Yum! It was an excellent opportunity to try some Korean food so I loaded up! It was really delicious.

Curtis and I then hummed and hawed about our options for the rest of the day. We deliberated seeing the Van Gogh paintings as they were on exhibit in Seoul. We also thought about meeting up with some board gamers we met on line... TO BE CONTINUED!!!