Korean Job Discussion Forums

beison · Joined: 28 Feb 2010

Taking it all back to the start of the post, assuming nobody's a troll, and just because I've got some experience marrying into an awesome Korean family, this is what we did:

We had one wedding in the US. My family paid for it pretty much in full, but her family did pay for their plane tickets (9 people) to come over to the US. Her family also paid for their accommodations in the US prior to the wedding for one week. They also gave my mother a pretty expensive blanket/wedding set. It had some fancy gifts and some fancy traditional stuff. It was nice. They also paid for a bespoke suit for me to wear to the wedding. My mother gave my wife her wedding dress (we altered it a bit to get it to fit and be a bit more modern as well.)

That was last year. This year we are planning a Korean wedding as well. We're also going to have it at a wedding hall. This is very common in Korea. It's the least stressful and most streamlined process. My wife's family will pay for this in full, but since they're going to be getting most of the money back through money gifts, they also offered to put up my family (10ish people) in a nice Hanok style pension for a few days.

Obviously my wife and I are paying for portions of both weddings as well. We did everything cheapish and cost effective, but are very fortunate to both come from middle class families that can help some with finances.

The bottom line though, is that there really should be some split between families. Korean weddings follow a very different traditional structure than western weddings, but the total cost is always split some way between the bride and groom's family. The more I'm around Koreans, the more you see this split is done in different ways sometimes, but you almost never have one family coughing up everything.

When you smash two extremely different cultures together, you're going to expect a lot of differences, but the most important thing is to maintain the costs being split.

matthews_world · Joined: 15 Feb 2003

So you decided to wait a year. Waiting for the father to pass away are we?

Seriously though...if you're a man, you could help the father out with his medical bills and earn some credibility the mom on the Korean side of the family.

I don't understand the Western Union thing. You didn't have a swift code for your bank back home to transfer money with less fees deducted as Western Union?

Fallacy · Joined: 29 Jun 2015 Location: ex-ROK

The narrative of this serialized novel is interesting so far, but when will the next installment be available?

liveinkorea316 · Joined: 20 Aug 2010 Location: South Korea

I too think the OP was either greatly exaggerated, a big von or pure fiction. Weddings don't happen like that in Korea. There is a lot of money involved but such a one-sided scenario seemed like girlfriend's father wanted his medical bills paid more than anything. But again more than likely fiction given the OP admitted his gf was a little unhinged.

Lazio · Joined: 15 Dec 2010

No sane Korean woman would marry at the age of 21, nor would their family approve. Maybe someone on the very bottom of the society. Or if they got knocked up. We are reading a fiction from a troll.