On Saturday I attended the wedding of one of my friends over here, Dan Williams. Dan is a former debater of note in the United States and by chance ended up staying in the same building as I did with his fiancee, now wife Yun Hi. My parents got on very well with them when they visited and they are a lovely couple. Their wedding was certainly different, but not actually typical of a normal Korean wedding.

Most Korean weddings actually take place in wedding convention halls. These are large multi storied complexes that have about five or six halls that process a skew of ceremonies everyday. The ceremonies take place, then all the guests merge into one large catering facility and eat together. They eat from trays, sit on plastic seats and essentially get fed like you would at school dinners. The place Dan and Yun Hi were married was much nicer than this, if still a little strange.

It was a restaurant at the top of a movie theater. (The movie theater had a large model of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings outside in a surreal touch.) The restaurant itself had a sort of mock medieval/Knights of the Round table vibe, but just about carried it off without being too tasteless. It also had a nice balcony where some of the guests, including myself, could view the festivities, and very nice they were too.

Most of the ceremony was in Korean, but with a lot of clapping by the guests that was easy enough to follow. However, they had a really lovely touch where Dan gave his vows in Korean and Yun Hi gave hers in English. I think I got something in my eye at that point. The place we were in had a retractable roof and at the end everyone got a helium balloon which they got to release. It was a lovely moment, that not even the grumbling of those who pointed out the environmental damage caused could spoil. We even then got a nice bit of steak. Grand.