The Wedding

Well it has been a while....a month and a half, and it seems far too much to write about our entire wedding.

Here are a few lessons I learned....

Korean florists will do whatever the heck they please, this includes giving you red roses with ugly yellow flourishes with way too much foliage and baby's breath. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of the horrid McDonalds colored 'boutonnieres.' Stephen's was about the size of his head, but at least it wasn't yellow and red.

I do have pictures of my sister's bouquet. I told them I wanted the same flowers in it as my own but half the size. This is what we got:

She found it so hilarious she left it as it was, but who in their right mind is like, "You know these maroon and yellow daisies will look great in this!"

Luckily my flowers were at least a little more subdued. Still this is after we ripped off a ugly huge lace 'embellishment' and large leaves and yellow tissue-y flowers that wrapped around the arrangement. Ivory and purple, a touch of green was my request; how could this be the answer?

As seen above the larger flower arrangements were a little closer, but I don't remember anything about pink.

Lesson 2: Get to your wedding 4 hours early!

After arriving I was bombarded with the issue of the flowers and then when that was settled by enlisting Matthew (the best man) to fix them, I was about to get my hair done when our curling iron blew out....or rather started smoking. Oh to Joy. Thank God I have friends who live close by and were ready early. My friend Kristin came to the rescue with her curling iron and expertise. And thank God my friend Candace had come early with her husband (who played our music) and with her sorority skills she did my make up and helped with hair.

She laughed and said, "I love that my credentials for doing hair are that I was in a sorority." But hey, some stereotypes are right.

All this to say I was only 30/40 minutes late to my own wedding.

I used to wonder how people could be late to their own weddings; I will never again complain about waiting.

My mother had to keep reminding me "This is for you, they won't start without you, don't stress out." That was my last wedding lesson: selfishness. And that is the lesson I will pass on to any young brides I meet. People will wait, people will forget they had to wait and they will still have a good time. The wedding day is to be united as one, not to throw the most organized and elegant party of the year.

Getting married was wonderful..... hopefully I will post more about it at a later date...... back to teaching English!

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.