I’m a bit late on this, but well, here are Yunjoo and my wedding pictures we had taken a few weeks ago. It’s traditional in Korea (and some other countries) to have pictures taken before the wedding. I don’t know how it was many years ago, but nowadays it’s typical for the bride to have 2-3 wedding dresses and the groom to have 2-3 tuxedos to wear during the photo shoot. The main reason for this is to have a big photo album and some various sized pictures at the ceremony.

One of the problems we ran into was the cost of renting the dresses. In Korea, they tend to run about $1000 per hour rental which is pretty crazy since you can buy a very nice brand new dress in the US for less than that price. Yunjoo knew this too, so we found a couple of dresses on ebay that were unused. Although one of the sellers never sent the dress, and after some time, I was able to get the money back and use it towards a dress from a real dress company. Yunjoo wanted a party-type dress instead of a third dress which helped save money too. Renting the studio/photographer/photo album/printed photos/dresses/my tux all seemed a bit elaborate to me, but I’ve come to learn there are many differences between Korean and American wedding cultures. Another thing (that we’re not doing) is the gift-giving to parents and relatives. This can range from gold watches, expensive jewelry, large amounts of money, etc. Actually, I did get my mother in-law a new washer since she didn’t have one. Yunjoo told me some parents/relatives will disapprove of the wedding if their gift isn’t expensive enough… Also, the groom is normally expected to provide a house and the bride is supposed to provide all of the furniture and appliances. The whole wedding thing makes a lot of newly weds go broke, or else they don’t get married because they can’t afford it. Many have to borrow from their parents.

Anyway, the pictures are uploaded to our wedding site that Yunjoo mainly handles.