Ceremony Planning.

So here is what Stephen and I knew about what we wanted in our ceremony- walk down the aisle, someone pray over us, say our vows, kiss and go.

We talked with our pastor (Jimmy is doing our wedding so that is another answered prayer, it will be in English!) and John (kinda the Korean leader of our church) about our ceremony this past Sunday at lunch. And lemme' tell you, this was the most stressful part of our whole planning so far. I feel like everyone is an amateur at planning their wedding ceremony.....at least if it is your first one.

So we sit there and the first few minutes was explaining how we don't want an announcer. You see in Korea there is literally someone like a sports announcer who tells everyone "Here is the groom" and "Here comes the bride" or "Here are the parents." Which for us Americans tends to be implied, or at least you hope it is implied when you walk down the aisle in a white dress with your father.

So no we don't want an announcer.

Then there was a little discussion about how we didn't need special chairs for our parents. Another Korean custom is that the parents sit up front facing the audience for the ceremony......funny how they have adopted their own traditions to the western ceremony.

There was also a big confusion over if the ring-bearer actually will carry the rings, and if we should have someone sit at the table to watch the gifts/tell people to sign the guest book.

So my advice is to watch some wedding videos of ceremonies on youtube and figure out what you want before sitting down with your pastor. Then at least you will know something. However that would not have saved us from the cultural confusion about a wedding ceremony.

I know our wedding will be fine as long as we say those vows and get that kiss, but it was a stress that could have been avoided, both if we had researched and had known we would have Jimmy as our pastor; we still weren't sure if it would be in Korean or not so we didn't really discuss it.

So yes, answered prayers, service in English and ceremony planned, now I just need to make up those programs. :)

He provides again and again.

I need to remember that complications are just more opportunities to watch God fix everything.

Stephen went to the bar we thought would be the best location to host a band and guess what, they're IN!!!

And sorry friends, we won't be getting you an open bar (we know how foreigners do in this country:) but we will have a band!

So it looks as if Stephen and I will be able to have our first dance.

Munnys and Dummys

Stephen got two Munnys from his parents that we made them ship us before they get here so I wouldn't be stressing to decorate them. If you do not know what a Munny is, here is a picture:

I was so excited to get them! Thank you Mom and Pop Howard for sending them so promptly!

So guess what I did all Saturday morning? That's right, dress them in wedding garb. That means I sewed a suit jacket for one and made a bow-tie and I made a wedding dress for the other and a bird-cage veil.

So good to see it.

In other wedding news we ordered our flowers all in about 25 or 30 minutes from the same woman. That means 6 arrangements, the bouquet, a matching smaller one for my sister and 6 boutonnières all for one kinda low price of 400,000 won. We figured it would be 300-500,000 so we were satisfied with our florist. She is even delivering to the church at 9 a.m. the day of the wedding.

It was a rather interesting experience though. I mean we told her the size we wanted and the kinds of flowers we like, which she kinda nodded at and pretty much said "I can make them lovely" so who knows what I'll actually be getting, but I love flowers in general so I can't imagine getting arrangements and being like "AH they're so ugly!"

Stephen and I went with the two women in my adult class (Bora and Louise) and it was so fun and relaxing. Just out to buy some wedding flowers, no big deal. We didn't even check with other shops to compare prices, which maybe sounds naive, but it was so much nicer that way. Just in and out.

Thank God for Korean friends!

In not so fun news, our church let us know this week that they don't allow non-christian music to be played in the church, "It's policy." So now that our band is on board we have to figure out another location to dance.

I don't think my argument, that any music which makes one praise God with joy in dancing is christian music, will fly.

But, if I have learned anything through this whole experience it is to trust God will take care of it. He confirmed our band, he got us a location, flowers, decorations, Munnys, friends and so much more, so what is one more location?

I feel God has over and over whispered to me, "Can you trust me with this one more detail?" and after a bit of frustration He usually gives me the faith to say, "Yes I do. Take my anxiety, take the issue and make it work."

And He is the most faithful.

3 Weeks to Go

1. Location: check

2. Pastor: kinda check

Turns out there is some kind of confusion over if our actual pastor will be able to do our ceremony, because the Korean head pastor said he would......I want my wedding in English, I hope they care.

3. Band....... the jury is still out.

4. Flowers: well they can't make any arrangements at this time so really this doesn't matter.

5. Rings: Check

6. Hundreds of green circles cut and some on strings: Check

7. Crayons and Candles: Check

8. Dress: Check

9. Tux: Check.....well except the vest and tie

10. Cake topper: arrived and ready for decorating

11. Details of Stephen and my life on circles: Check

12. Guest book: check

13. Supplies for programs: Check

14. Ceremony....well when we figure out if we have a pastor who speaks english I think we can figure this one out.

15. Affidavit from Seoul: well that would require Stephen being able to get off work so we can get married in another city.....Korea is so weird

16. Cake: like the flowers, this can't be done until later so it is not so important

17. Food: Check.....well we have the food promised but we still need to talk menu with the caterer.

18. Vows: it's in the works.

19. Dress/shoe embellishments: Check

20. Friends and Family: Check.

So although we have had much of our wedding planning done, getting actual information and things done is difficult. Thanks to my great ex-co-worker we have a caterer and I do believe she is now working on possible hotels for my family. Saturday she will go with us to the caterer to talk food and possibly to some florists to check prices. What I have noticed here is if something is for a wedding they will rip you off. So my new thought is don't tell them it's for a wedding, maybe just a party, and then you might even have more color options. Weddings here equal white flowers. Still I will know more after this weekend....hopefully.

The great success has probably been making a flower piece for my sash/belt (top picture) and flowers for my shoes, all out of tulle, pearls and ribbon.

Wedding bands, or something like it.

Stephen and I have been searching-ish for wedding bands on and off since he proposed. For the most part Korean wedding bands are laden with diamonds, particularly the men's ones. And they prefer yellow gold to white for wedding bands, (at least that is what I was told by an older Korean woman).

So we decided we wanted to do our real wedding band exchange in the states and find temporary ones here for a relatively cheap price to allow time later to find what we really want.

So we are walking around in our favorite market which supplies us with all of our second hand clothing and halloween costumes and as Stephen is digging, literally, in a pile of clothing I stop at a glass case of jewelry which appears to be rather inexpensive. So I spot some PLAIN bands just sitting in between some other rings in proper displays and I get the sales men to pull them out. Sure enough, a simple plain silver band that fits my hand. I also notice there are thicker rounder silver bands and call Stephen over and our wonderful Korean friend Kwon Minjee explains we want a mens size. The salesman says he can special order it by Monday and have them polished and ready for us (it was a Saturday) and they are 20,000 won a piece. Then he says since we are getting the pair we can have them for 20,000 total.

So we bought our wedding bands for 20 dollars total. Sa-weeet!

I really do love Korea, our wedding is slowly becoming awesome, especially thanks to Korean friends and random generous salespeople.

Stay-tuned for the catering adventure with Korean caterers :)

The Lord provides.

Location with Leeway

I was going to let Stephen write about finding out location and all that went on to get it since he really took care of it, and I even gave him my password to do it, but alas, I guess my communication wasn't clear enough.

We have a Location.

I suppose that is a very important thing. We weren't stressing, even though we only had about 3 months till the wedding date, we just trusted the Lord had it under control.

Sure enough we heard word from our pastor that the Church approved out wedding and we could have the downstairs chapel and cafeteria. Now it is not picture perfect, but it is free. And when we thought about it, the smaller area is really better suited for our wedding guest list since we would be dwarfed in the huge main chapel. We would fill maybe 15 of the 50 pews in the place.

The even more amazing thing is that they are like, "yeah you can decorate it however you want" (I am not sure they have any idea what they are getting themselves into).

Stephen and I went and looked at our future wedding local on a weekday free from church-goers and have decided upon an inexpensive and extremely time consuming way to decorate involving a ridiculous amount of paper and green. We shall see how that goes, but it'll be fun rounding up the families to decorate right?.....right?

It really is super exciting, and it's a good thing that in Korea things are done last minute or I might really be stressing over how we really have very little set in stone....like a caterer, or how much we'll pay our band, or if our pastor will be around for the wedding, or what shoes I'll wear, or were to get our flowers done. God thing God is on our side and knows exactly the perfect solutions to all our problems.

So my advice for a location? If you don't want to pay for the wedding halls (which are beautiful but want you to pay for make up for your husband...) then be flexible, and even the blandest location can be transformed with a little creativity.....at least I hope they can.

Invitations- The Korean Way

So there seems to be a trend as we are planning our wedding.....personalization is not the Korean way.

When I visited the wedding hall and asked if they could change the ugly red ribbons to at least a crimson or some other color, they said, "no, that is the only color."

When we asked if bridal shops would alter my dress, they said they only do their own. And they only do anything for you if you want the full package.

We went to an invitation printer today and we got just about the same thing. After telling them what we wanted they said it would be over 300,000 won and then-'Here are the sample books, pick one out and we will print on them in black ink.' HA! Then we were told of another printing place that could possibly do the job for us.

My original invite is two layers. The top layer a transparent rice-type-paper with a drawing I had done and our invite info on it and below a green bubbles layer......well turns out to print it, it will cost us around 250,000 won for 100 invites without envelopes.

So unfortunately for those who will be attending our Korea wedding, you will have to settle for a lovely Korean style wedding invite, a little remniscent of American weddings in the 80's. Still they did have a few lovely options and at prices as low as 500 won a piece with envelopes; that is hard to beat.

So dear budget, you are getting in the way of my perfect wedding, but then again, it wouldn't be a wedding in Korea without being told you can't do it your way :)

However this is good news for those non-do-it-yourselfers. You have a price range from 500 won to about 2,800 won an invite, most of them lying somewhere around 1000.

Still it is a bit relieving to know that I don't have to do anything myself.....yet.

Engagement Photos: Take advantage of your area

Make sure you're in love. If not the pictures will not be good.

Find a Photographer with mad skills

Stephen and I lucked out with our photographer. Yolondo Lupoe is a friend of ours and offered her services for a rockin' low price. She is a professional photographer and we could not be more pleased with her God given talent at capturing the moment.

And in the hours we took to take out pictures I learned some things that really made the photos fun and great.......

Take advantage of where you are.

Ask a more experienced Weigugen (foreigner) where lovely places in the city would be. Maybe gardens, a good hike, art museum, a rooftop garden, fountains, a historic section of town, skate-park or anything that you fancy really.

Grasp onto the Culture

We were'nt too sure about the idea of wearing Korean traditional clothes, it seemed a bit silly, but it ended up being our favorite part of the day. Hanboks are so freeing. I felt beautiful, comfortable and uninhibited. Not to mention they made for fairytale photos.

PLAY

Yolondo was right, the best pictures are often the cheesiest. We went back to our childhood and played sleeping beauty, wrestled, tried acrobatic tricks, danced, ran about, and even did a Korean Drama bit.

Make sure you have a few normal pictures in NATURAL lighting.

You know Mema and Papa will want lovely pictures in western clothing. Make sure you take pictures before 11 in the morning or after 2 in the afternoon. Mid-day the sun is too direct and makes strange shadows under your eyes. Later in the afternoon to early dusk is lovely, especially if you have a location where you can get sunset silhouettes . Everyone expects these pictures, so even though they aren't as fun, they are worth having.

Over-expose/Underexpose

An easy trick to getting a lovely picture is to over-expose just enough to soften all the colors. No photoshop needed, just leave that shutter open. Or the reverse which can make for a different mood and emphasize certain lighted areas.

Just do it....till you're told not to.

In Korea, foreigners really can do whatever they want, at least for a time. Ignorance really is bliss. We jumped a fence to play around this enormous bell which happens to be a signal for air raids....

We had a few looks by passersby, but no one said anything. It also helped that it was secluded up in a small forested area.

JUMP IN

There is a large foutain downtown where tons of people meet up and we thought....maybe we should get some water shots. So although our photographer feared disaster we went ahead, comforting her that we really wanted the neon and possible people in the background.

People love something different

Everyone loved our fountain shots.

It was fun getting wet, if a bit uncomfortable with a crowd forming to watch us jump in and out of the waterfall, but in the end, it produced some great pictures which were often more natural. If you are having fun, it is not difficult to look happy.

Engagement pictures don't always have to have your face in them.

Dance like no one is watching.....seriously....we had quite the crowd. I believe they thought we might be famous and filming a movie.

If you don't have a professional photographer friend, a friend with manual camera skills who has some good facebook albums can still do a legitamate job. Remember, for engagement pictures, really you will probably only use a handful, so if you get over 5 great pictures they did spectacular.

The whole event took most of our day, from 2:30-8:30 and over 800 shots were taken. 400 of which were given to us and we love about 100 of those. So be patient it takes time. Take a lot of photos and get creative.

The other option is to go to a Korean photography studio, but I have yet to experience that, perhaps in another entry....

Most importantly, relax, you're in love so you'll look lovely.

Pick an Inexpensive Date

Yes, January 1, 2011, seems pretty ideal on paper. I mean how sweet is 1/1/11 as your anniversary? But it is not perfect.

Turns out that flights to Korea around this time are, to say the least, expensive.

Our families are scouring the internet and talking to travel agents, comparing prices of going to Japan in November and coming to korea from there, or flying through Shanghai. My mother is exhausting her creativity in figuring out ways to save money. Originally it was thought that my father could use his frequent flyer miles, but as it turns out miles are only good when airlines have little business, not during the peak season (jerks).

So now family is even talking of not coming.....or just complaining. And I understand, I mean $8000 for travel.......that could be quite a wedding in the states, not that I would ever ask for that much.....and yet I am now.

We just don't have the travel time that we would need to have a wedding in the states. When you take into account our travel time (around 2 days each way) and the jet lag recovery at 3 days: that is the wedding and mayyyybe 2 days 'honeymoon' in February Virginia before returning to the Korean daily grind at work with a lovely 3 days of jet lag.....not sounding too fun.

Or maybe we should just quit our jobs and head home.... yes I know I am just being dramatic. I need to give this to the Lord, and trust me, multiple times throughout the day I am praying He takes these issues and takes care of them. I mean He runs the whole world, what is a few plane tickets? He has got this one.

The Lesson

If you want people to come to your wedding, although vacation season seems like a good time because of schools and time off, it is much cheaper in the summer, or off season, like mid-fall or February to early may. This will ensure a minimal financial strain on guests. Unfortunately it is perhaps too late for me....

Step one: Make Korean Friends

I arrived in South Korea on August 2, 2010. Ten days later my boyfriend (Stephen) showed up at my apartment at 7:20 in the morning rudely awaking me with the best birthday present ever: a huge chunk of hard carbon that nicely fits on my left ring finger thanks to sleuth work from my baby sister.

So Stephen and I pretty quickly set to trying to figure out where we will have the wedding, right after chatting with our parents and a few friends about our happy engagement.

There are a few things that we know we need:

1. Our immediate families to be present
2. Spend time with our closest friends
3. Have a wedding date fairly quickly (December or January)
4. Have enough money for a honeymoon

Well, seeing as we are both english teachers at Hagwons (Korean after-school schools) we are a bit limited on vacation time (one week in summer and one week in winter). We searched all sorts of options from Mexico, Florence, the Caman Islands, to going home to Virginia. And we have learned a lot about plane ticket prices.

Most of the options that we explored were places that would be relatively inexpensive to fly to for our family and friends. However we soon found out our winter holiday would be the first week of February and therefore a completely awful time for family and many of our friends to travel from the States.

One day my mother, Stephen's mother, Stephen, my best friend and I all had a very similar idea ......why not have two weddings? One in Korea and one back home after we return for our friends.

So taking it as divine intervention that everyone happened to be thinking the same thing we have decided to have our wedding in Korea.

This of course creates entirely new problems; translation.

Neither Stephen nor I speak Korean worth a darn. This means we are fully dependent on our Korean co-workers and friends.

Stephen's co-teacher Minnie has been very helpful. She took Stephen all around town looking for wedding rings and has taken me around to a wedding hall or two, only to discover it will cost around 1,850,000 won to just hold the ceremony. - That is two tickets to Europe.

We have one more location to check out, a hotel in town; but the free chapel that our church (Hanbit) has offered is sounding pretty good, even if it isn't lovely. The important thing is that we get married, which I am pretty sure can happen anywhere.

So as of now, we have a date, January 1, 2011 at 1 pm. That's right, 1/1/11 at 1. My mother has ordered my wedding dress online.....and I have yet to try it on.....so perhaps soon I will have details on korean tailors- I really hope not though. And I have almost completed our photoshop invites- which will hopefully cut costs.....but where do I find a printer?

I suppose this is another job for some Korean friends!