How Koreans Get Married

How Koreans Get Married

The text "How Do Koreans Celebrate Wedding?" refers to how koreans used to get married and how they do it now. Starting from the past, Korean families used to arrange marriages for their children using a matchmaker to find them a good match.  Continuing with the present, there are two ways to get married in Korea, by love match (two people fall in love), or by a arranged marriage.

Koreans believe in "the four pillars" that are used by a fortune-teller to predict the person's destiny.  The fortune-teller looks at the four pillars of the couple's four pillar to see if they can be happy and get engaged or if they need to be rematched.  Then, the families get together anywhere but the groom's house for the engagement ceremony to set a date for the wedding.

It is usual that the families spend a lot of money giving gifts between then, and one of the gifts is an special document that has the four pillar of the groom and it i kept by the girl for the rest of her life.  Before the ceremony, the groom's family sends a box of gifts that is carried by the groom's friends and delivered at night while the friends scream "Buy a hahm! Hahm for sale".

In the day of the wedding, the groom gives his mother-in-law a  wooden goose (symbol of love).  After that, the couple sits on a table and takes a sip an special wine, which is then mixed and they take another sip.  In korean american culture, the wife gives her in-laws dried fruit that represents her wish to have children, them offer her tea, and at the end of the wedding they throw the dryed fruits to the bride and she has to catch them with her skirt.  Then, they have a banquet called "The Noodle Banquet" where are a lot of noodles that represent a happy and long life for the couple, and cakes with, again, dryed fruits as dessert.  Also, it is usual that the oldest son that gets married has to live with his wife and his parents.