How to Live Korean by Soo Kim

Author:Soo Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The ceremony

Historically Korean wedding ceremonies were elaborate and involved extravagant traditional wedding garments worn by the bride and groom. It was usually held in the small front courtyard of the bride’s family home, so many people from the neighbourhood would try to take a peek over the walls to catch a glimpse of the ceremony and the bride in her best clothes and makeup, which included two distinct red circular patches on both cheeks and a sparkling headpiece.

A large mat would be laid across the yard and a table placed on it, filled with various food, drink and centrepiece items, such as a pair of wooden Mandarin duck carvings to symbolize bountiful children, peace and fidelity. The groom would travel on horseback to the bride’s house on the day of the wedding. The ceremony would entail a series of formal bows between the groom and bride, who was assisted by a female helper on either side to bow down to the floor in her elaborate wedding gown. The wedding night was spent at the bride’s family home and the next morning the groom would take his wife back to his house where they would begin their married life. She would travel there in a gama (가마 – a sedan chair), which was manually carried by a group of porters. Modern-day weddings in Korea follow the Western tradition, with the bride and groom in a white wedding dress and tuxedo, and the bride being walked down the aisle by her father. But many weddings still incorporate some traditional aspects, such as the paebaek (폐백), which is a wedding blessing ceremony. Traditionally it was a pre-wedding ritual where the bride is introduced to the groom’s family in a formal setting but these days it often takes place on the wedding day, just after the reception.

The paebaek ritual sees the bride and groom wearing traditional Korean garments known as hanbok (한복), some even choose to wear the actual elaborate Korean wedding gowns worn back in the day. The bride and groom simultaneously bow facedown to several elderly members of the extended family, who each take turns sitting on floor mats just beyond a table set up with food. The bowing involves placing the front sides of both hands on top of each other against your forehead and bowing down to the ground until your hands touch the floor, after which you sit in an upright position but with hands to your sides and head tilting slightly downwards out of respect for your elders. Modern-day paebaeks involve bowing to elders on both sides of the family, rather than just the groom’s family as was the practice in the past.

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