The Unwilling Flower Girl

Many moons ago, when the weather was still hot and humid, I was invited to the wedding of one of my Korean classmates, who I didn't know very well. Her name is Michelle.

I went with Leah and Ok Hyang. The wedding was close to my house and I had to work that day, which was convenient. I met them at the station and we went to the wedding hall.

This was my second wedding in Korea. This was my first wedding hall experience, which I have now heard referred to as "factory weddings" from several sources. They are extremely common and basically people run in, get married, and run out. They are scheduled at strange times like 11:50 or 1:25.The wedding hall has several rooms where weddings occur and then there's some sort of buffet meal afterwards. It is tradition to give money as a gift, rather than a gift, which basically go towards paying for the wedding and honeymoon, which I think makes sense.

We arrived and took pictures with Michelle. They made me do the pose to the right for her official pictures, which was slightly humiliating and then someone captured it with my camera.

My own weapon was used against me.

Then, just as we were about to walk into the wedding hall to attend the wedding, the wedding attendants grabbed me, Leah and Ok Hyang (in her jean shorts,) dragged us near the room where the bride and groom were sitting and said in Korean, "Here takes these."

And by "these" she meant 2 baskets of flowers for me and Leah and 2 bells for Ok Hyang.

She then said, "When they walk by, I will point to you and you will throw the flowers at them" (them being the bride and groom).



I had unwillingly become the flower girl for the wedding. And I had no idea how it had happened.

This was all being videotaped and broadcast into the wedding hall room and photographed.

Leah and I both said, "We just want to sit down and watch the wedding!"

So we awkwardly threw flowers at them as they walked by (I of course didn't throw enough of the flowers and they walked by really fast) then had to awkwardly walk to our seats in the hall, with a lot of people looking at us.

One thing I noticed about the wedding was no one was paying attention and they were all talking to each other, instead of listening to the officiant and watching the wedding happen. Some people were turned around in their seats talking to the people behind them. I asked Leah, who's married to a Korean man, what that was about and apparently it's very normal.

Also, the foreigners tended to send looks at the people talking, but no one was noticing because they were too busy chatting away.

I didn't understand any of the wedding, of course, since it was in Korean.

After the vows were said, they bowed to all the parents, as is tradition, took pictures with everyone and then it was finished. It was about 15 minutes total.

After the ceremony, we were ushered out to the room, so the next wedding could commence, to the next room where the meal was held. We showed the ticket we were given when we gave our gift, then ate. Afterwards, I had to head to work fairly quickly.

Ok Hyang and I are in the picture above this one. That's Leah and I to the left on the bottom.

And that was my second wedding experience: The Unwilling Flower girl.