A Wedding in South Korea

Hi, guys!

As I have promised you, here is more about my brother's wedding in Seoul, South Korea.

The wedding took place in a Wedding Hall and consisted of a white wedding and a traditional Korean wedding. However, that wasn't an official wedding but more of a "fun-wedding" because you don't have to celebrate your marriage in Korea. You can just go to the register office and tell them you are married now. 


The ceremony started with the white wedding.
At first, my mum and Jinhee's mum had to walk down the aisle and light two candles on the altar. My mum had to wear a traditional Korean dress but everybody else could dress normal. Only the girls were not supposed to wear something sexy, for example a short dress with a plunging neckline.
Then the groom came in and at last the bride with her father.












Daniel and Jinhee had written a text as a marriage promise and together they read it out loud. Daniel said his part in English and Jinhee hers in Korean, so that everybody was able to understand something. Everything else, however, was in Korean, so we didn't really understand anything!

After that, my sister and I played a song on the piano for them. I played "River flows in You" by Yiruma (who is a Korean pianist) and my sister Jessica played "People help the People" by Birdy.

Then some friends of Jinhee danced to a Korean song and after a while Jinhee joined them as a surprise for Daniel. We thought that was hilarious because nobody would do that at a wedding in Austria :)

When the first part was over, the bride and the groom had to change into traditional wedding clothes. 

This was the wedding gown and suit →

← That were the clothes they had to wear overhead

There was a table with dried fruits and soju (the traditional alcohol in South Korea). The groom had to pour soju in a cup for the bride and the other way around. Then they had to eat a date together and whoever got the stone wears the pants, which was my brother. There was another tradition: the parents of the groom had to throw dates and chestnuts and the bridal couple had to catch them. The dates were a symbol for girls and the chestnuts symbolized boys. Daniel and Jinhee caught three dates so they are destined to have three girls according to that ritual! 

At the end, Daniel had to carry Jinhee on his back and had to run in a circle around the room and the bigger this circle was the bigger will be their house. 

All in all, I have to say I am really glad that I could be part of this experience. I really enjoyed the wedding and I was pretty curious about the traditions. 

Have a great weekend :)

See you soon,

Larissi ♥

Seoul, South Korea

An-nyeong ha-se-yo!

Today I want to talk about my holidays in South Korea. I spent two weeks there this summer and it was an amazing experience!

So why did I fly to South Korea?
Well, I have an older brother who met a girl, Jinhee, from Seoul about 4 years ago.  She was an exchange student and supposed to be in Austria for only six months but they fell in love. However, Jinhee had to go back to South Korea to finish her studies, but my brother decided to make an exchange semester in Soul to be with her again. After that -- and a long time of planning this through -- she moved to Vienna with him. Since then she has been living in Austria. Last year, he proposed to her and they got married in March in Austria. But Jinhee also wanted to celebrate her wedding in South Korea with her family, so they decided to marry again in August in Seoul and of course we, the closer family, came too!


After a 14 hour flight (without the stopover in Dubai!) we finally arrived at the Incheon Airport in South Korea. The flight was terribly long but at least there were lots of movies to watch and we also had the possibility to order vegan food for me and my sister so there haven't been any problems.
We actually had a lot of fun taking family selfies at the airport! :D

Behind me there is my brother Daniel, who got married.
Then, there's my other brother Wolfgang, my sister Jessica and of course Mum and Dad.

I'll tell you now a few things about the most famous sights because if I told you everything about the whole stay, this blogpost would be reaaaally long :P
But stay tuned because I think at least one more post of South Korea will follow because I want to show you the wedding!! 

The first sight we visited was the Gyeongbokgung Palace. 

Inside there was a park and a lake that looked very nice

Another attraction of Seoul is the Namsangol Hanok Village, where you can see how people lived about 50 years ago. Jinhee told us, that even her grandmother and grandfather had still lived like that. 

Here you an see what the kitchen was like.

That was a typical living room with a table for two people.
They still sit on the floor while eating, but now the tables are bigger!  

The most famous sight in Seoul is probably the Seoul Tower, a television tower. You can either walk up what felt like thousands of stairs or go by cable car, but you will have to wait in a queue for about two hours because there are so many people.

Seoul Tower by night

And of course we also had to go to Gangnam! :D
For those who don't know, Gangnam is actually a city district where all the rich people are living. I'm sure you all know the song by Psy... But did you know that Psy comes from a rather poor family and makes fun of the rich in that song?

Here you can see us dancing "Gangnam Style" :D

Now I'd like to come to a more serious topic, namely the Korean War. My brother Wolfgang and I made a day trip to the DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone, on the boarder to North Korea. 

What I have not known before this trip was that South Korea wants to be united with North Korea again, but at a time like this this seems impossible to me...

South and North Korea should be united again

The train station to Pyongyang has already been built

There in the distant you can see North Korea

Speaking of serious issues, there's one more thing I would like to show you. That is the subway or rather the subway stations. The stations are not like ours but there are glass walls between the waiting area and the rails, so that nobody can throw themselves in front of the train.

Suicide is a serious and important issue because South Korea is the country with the highest rate of people committing suicide. Especially students are under a lot of pressure because they have to be very, very good at school and university. Jinhee told us, that the students get up at 5 a.m. to study before school/university or go to extra lessons. Then they go to school/university till the afternoon or evening and then they go to the library where they study until midnight. And the next day is no different.


I think I should come to an end now because this post has become super long :)
As I said before, there will be another blog post about South Korea, specifically about the wedding. There would be so much more to write about!! We have also been to a little island called Jeju where we went to the beach. And I haven't even told you about the food yet! :O 
Okay, I see... There will be a few more posts about this holiday!

Now.... A little glimpse of the wedding to make you more curious... ;)

And the food.... yummy :D 

But hot as hell!

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and drop by again to read my following posts!
Have a nice day!

An-nyeong-hi kye-se-yo!

Larissi ♥