South Koreans spurn lavish weddings
Print Edition
The night before their wedding, Kim Kwang-yoon and Cho Jin-oh were up until 2am with the bride’s mother, setting tables. Their marriage venue: a room in the basement of Seoul city hall, rented from the government for US$60.
With South Korea’s average wedding expenditure last year at nearly US$64,000, or about double that of the United States, more citizens are spurning lavish events for smaller functions as the economy slows, the age at marriage rises and parents nearing retirement have less money to splurge.
South Korean weddings are typically a show of status, with hundreds of guests and expensive gifts. The average expenditure, from a survey by wedding planner Duo, excludes the cost of housing, traditionally provided by parents.
“I felt that if I don’t like getting invitations from people I don’t know very well, they would feel the same. I wished for my wedding to be celebrated by people I wanted there,” said Cho, 32.
She and her 34-year-old husband paid for their US$10,000 wedding themselves.
Huge expenses prompt more young people to delay marriage, and consequently children, worsening one of the world’s lowest birth rates in a population that is aging the fastest in the industrialized world.
To boost marriage rates from an all-time low last year, the government is renting out public buildings cheaply.
The trend began to take off last year, spurred partly by celebrities, said Kim Jung-youl, an official of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
Last month, movie stars Won Bin and Lee Na-young got married in a wheat field in front of fewer than 50 guests.
Kim and Cho, who run an online business, saved on the venue and wedding dress — bought online for US$100 — but a honeymoon to Paris soaked up half their spending.
“Weddings turned into lavish affairs because South Koreans were mixing local and Western traditions,” said Lee Sung-hee, a senior planner at Duo.
The go-small trend is a relief for parents, as South Koreans in their 50s and 60s are the most indebted in the country.
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