I met him a while back, when he was sometimes moonlighting at St.
Paul, doing who knows what, really. He doesn't speak, as far as I know, any
English, but seems to be rather amiable, and does enjoy drinking Soju as much
as the next person, as I he has come out to drink at least once when we went on
a field trip somewhere.

This weekend we had to work on Saturday, but it was
not so bad. We worked on Saturday so that we could take a Friday off this week
giving us a nice four day weekend. The 8th is Buddha's birthday and Friday is
like a freeday now. Fortunately Monday was Children's Day which is a national
holiday, so we still had two days off even with working on Saturday.

Anyway, Sunday was the wedding and I got a frantic call from Keesan around 1:40 asking
me if I could go with her. I had not orginally planned on attending, but
apparently she couldn't get a hold of Jason, who was supposed to go with her,
so I was going to be her date. I said no problem, asked about how dressed up I
should get and walked out the door.

With my book in hand as I have been reading the Harry Potter books and was
about a 1/4 of the way through book three and
could not stop. I met Keesan near Donga, asked if I should get a gift, and she
said no, and Jason showed up shortly thereafter, so we all went together. The
ceremony was at 3:00 at the Prince Hotel and off we went.

Getting married in Korea is kind of a strange affair, apart from the usual
ceremony you must of course register and sign papers, and what not. In Korea
when you sign your marriage papers you are at that moment legally married, and
everything else you do is just sort of for show, or at least that is how I
understand it.

Most Korean's end up having two ceremonies. The big, regal,
western one, then the traditional family ceremony. The western ceremony is what
we saw first. We entered into a large banquet hall, the normal place where one
would have a reception. It was full of people sitting at round tables, and Kim
spotted us and called us over to his table, where we sat with him and his wife,
and some people I don't know.

I looked around and noticed that at many of the
tables, many people had already begun to drink, or had finished bottles of
Soju, so I figured most people had been there for awhile. At one end of the
hall was the lunch buffet and at the other was a series of risers. On the top
tear was a long table, about waist high, where an elderly gentleman stood,
surrounded by bouquets and flowers on all sides.

The groom was talking to the
bride, and waiting about thrity feet away at a gazebo-ish gate that had been
set up in the middle of the hall. The bubble machine was qued and the air was
suddenly filled with hundreds of soap bubbles, and the pianist began to play
Scot Joplin's the Entertainer, and the groom took his place on the riser below
the table. As he walked up the smoke machine was prepared for the bride and the
front of the hall was filled with fog.

The bride was dressed in an ivory
wedding gone, very western style, with a nice veil, the pianiast played some of
the wedding march and she walked to the front, not very far at all, and was
handed over by her father, as would be expected, and led up the stairs, through
the billowing smoke and bubbles.

After that most people returned to their
converstaions. In fact, most people had not stopped talking when all the fun
and excitment started. Jason and I exchanged glances, but we figured this must
be fairly normal. The person at the table began to speak, he was apparently a
college proffesor and he went on about the importance of freindship while the
bride and groom were subjected to some heavy bright lights, directed by the
camera-man who was filming them as they listened.

The speach was about ten
minutes long, and they were then presented to the audience for applauds, no
kissing, mind you, and then the parents walked up an congradulated them, and a
line formed to shake their hands, while a second line rushed to the back of the
hall for the buffet.

After that were were told to go and eat, a nice buffet
that included several various types of meat and lots of sushi, squid, and other
korean goodies. The lunch lasted for about twenty minutes in all. While we were
eating the cake was wheeled over to the bride and groom, through another
blanket of fog from the machine. They cut it together and it was wheeled away.

Then the friends of the couple ascended the stage and some more pictures where
snapped of the couple. Then the bride tossed the bouquet to a chosen friend
several times over while the camerman snapped photos. After all of that was
over it was announced that the traditional ceremony would begin downstairs. And
people rushed out to watch that ceremony which I did get to see, but which from
what I understand is mostly allot of bowing to people while wearing traditional
Korean clothes.

We waited out the traditional ceremony in a coffeeshop, as per
the request of Kim, and after a bit finally made our ways back home, or back to
my book, as is more accurate. In all it was perhaps the strangest wedding I've
ever been too. It's as if there is a conception of what a wedding must be, and
using that as the premise they have created what they think might be an
appropriate wedding. Sort of like conducting a wake based on James Joyce's
Finigan's Wake.

More Later,
Sara