My friends wedding

My friend Colin McDonald, who I have known for about 35 years, got married May 26th in Kyrgyzstan.  He has been teaching English here in Korea for about 3 years now, and met his wife here.  She is ethnically Korean, but born and raised in Kyrgyzstan.  Most of her family is there, so that's where they had the wedding.  I was one of two best men.  Because it's the middle of the semester I was only able to go for a few days and didn't get to see much.

The wedding was held at a resort on Lake Issyk Kul, out on a pier which is barely visible in the photo below.  In the distance, what looks like clouds, are actually the snowy tops of mountains.

 View from the pier:

Vacation - Korean wedding

My co-teacher got married on Aug. 14th in Ilsan. The wedding mostly looked western because most people involved were wearing western wedding clothes, but the ceremony was different.



The wedding was held in this wedding hall on the 5th floor of this building:



The ceremony and dinner were at the same place. We sat at tables during the ceremony and ate afterwards. The buffet was good. I ate a lot of meat.



The most noticable differences between this wedding and a western wedding were the bride and groom didn't recite vows, the minister, or whatever he was, just talked for a long time. There was no exchange of rings and there was no kiss. There were some things with the mothers bowing to each other, and the bride and groom bowing to each family. Various people (friends of the groom, a bunch of kids, bride's grandmother) took turns singing in front of the bride and groom:



Those are just some of the things I noticed that were different. I can't really go into much more detail.