What an occasion, 56 friends of Ben and Mia traveled from 12 different countries to attend the wedding in Sang Dong, Bucheon, Korea.

It was a special moment for me personally, as it was through me that Ben and Mia met.  Ben who I met playing soccer at university, after that teaching in Korea and Mia was a fellow co-worker at my Korean English academy. The seed of Ben and Mia was planted when I invited Mia to my apartment for drinks with my mates, and the seed was sowed.

So it was pretty crazy that 5 years later, we were back in Sang Dong across the road from my old apartment where they had first met and now they were getting married. It was great to be back in my old stomping ground, but I will write another blog post about that soon (if I have time).

It was classic getting ready before the wedding, disorganised was definitely a word to describe it.  trying to organise 20 guys with no cell phones to meet in one place.  This sums it up, 5 of us turned up to the reception area of the wedding hotel wearing no shirts (a late rush to get our shirts ironed saw us getting the hotel linen cleaners to iron our shirts) and one member no shoes (apparently lost in the week long festivities). But we made it bang on time, 5pm sharp, looking darn right handsome.

First of all they had the western wedding which was predominantly spoken in Korean, luckily for Ben he is now completely fluent in Korean so he knew what he was getting himself into.

Following the western ceremony there was a tedious photo ceremony where a very authoritative photographer barked orders like a drill Sargent. It was quite funny when he was shouting at us in Korean and someone shouted out “just do what he’s saying”, haha, the photographer hadn’t quite grasped the concept that foreign looking people don’t speak Korean. Poor Ben and Mia won’t care if they don’t have another photo again.

Following the photo drill, a great spread of food and booze was put on for all.  Then it was time for the Korean ceremony which is usually conducted in a small room and only open to family. But they kindly had it in a large open room so all the foreign visitors could experience it. 

The Korean ceremony was quite entertaining, it involved Ben and Mia sitting on the floor around a table, bowing to family members, drinking some shots, throwing some stones onto a blanket to tell them how many children they were going to have, Ben piggy backing Mia around the table, then his mum, and some more drinking of shots.  Now that’s a wedding ceremony, sounds more like a university drinking game, but I’m sure there is a lot of meaning behind it all.

Then it was onto the after party at the Jazz and Bones club (some of the Korean bar names are rather hilarious, my favorite is bar free beer) that had been hired. A few speeches, and as a tribute to Ben and a cultural experience for the Koreans we performed the haka, much to the delight of the Koreans. The rest of the night was spent making the most of the open microphone and bar. 

 Cheers to Ben and Mia for a great time, and what a great couple!