Getting married to Patrick was fun, exhausting, exciting, stressful, wonderful, and probably the just the loveliest thing I've ever done. I cried most of the ceremony and (appropriately) partied the entire reception. I'm a lucky one. Then little Henry, who missed our wedding because he was ill, wanted to play his part as the ring bearer and would not take no for an answer. In his mind, my wedding waited for his fever to break. So, soon after our wedding day, we played pretend and had a small garden wedding. Our second wedding was wonderful. The only thing we missed were our parents, but we managed. Henry did a great job and all guests played a part in the 'ceremony.' Henry's parents even brought a delicious picnic. AND I finally played a game of croquet in my wedding dress.
THEN we moved to Korea. We never expected a third wedding. But it found us, somehow. The sweet woman that takes care of the foreign teachers in our program sent an email about the wedding one day. Patrick was checking his email when it popped up in the inbox. First come first serve, any volunteers? "Yes! Us! Pick us!" said Patrick.
Then a week later he sent me an email saying... "babe don't kill me but..."
Then another week later he came home with more information about the wedding. I was completely clueless up to this point. I figured there was a little event going on and some foreign couple was needed to play man and wife for a fake traditional wedding. Well... it turned out the traditional Korean wedding was going to occur at the Cheonan World Dance Festival. One of the 'best festivals' in Korea. Over twenty countries come to Korea to compete in the dance festival. Basically it's like Liberty, Mo's fall fest on crack and then some awesome on top.
Then more emails from Patrick...
"you need to ask off from school so we can have our measurements taken"
"what?! are we having the wedding outfits tailored to fit us?"
"oh yeah! we get to keep the clothes, didn't I tell you?"
"you haven't told me anything really..."
"well I heard one million people come to this festival and there might be a couple hundred people watching the wedding!"
"oh boy"
This last picture is of me and Dong Hyuk Ham (like palm). He's the sweetest Korean I've met besides my co-teacher, Ella. And he's the ripe age of 19. He's a smarty pants because he knows English pretty well! I think Hangul and English might be the two most difficult langauges to learn. Go Dong Hyuk! He translated all the ceremony rituals to Patrick and me. And he was there to help us during show time. Then he even stayed with us as we wondered around the rest of the festival afterwards. Patrick and I went back the next day to see more dancing and there he was again, ready to help! This weekend was awesome! I had tons of ajumas helping me like I was their own family and I had a really cute set of fake parents and in-laws. I messed up every step of the way but it's okay... I was having fun, though, right? We even had a reception dinner. It was at this little hole in the wall place near the park. Patrick asked Dong Hyuk to order us his favorite (cue groaning foreigner friends ^^) BUT it was delish and everyone loved it. Think we had almost all of our group attend the wedding and dinner.
I'll never forget it. Another wonderful wedding with Pat <3
Thanks Cheonan!
Oh did I mention a handful of my students saw this?! And both our principals were in attendance, one with a wedding gift. And I can't forget to tell you... there were well over fifteen 'professional' photographers. They photo bombed each other the entire time. ^^
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