Koreans are Having Smaller Weddings

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

What is your opinion about expensive wedding?

What is your experience about weddings in Korea?

Small is beautiful, say South Koreans making plans to marry

The night before their wedding, Kim Kwang-yoon and Cho Jin-oh were awake until 2 a.m. with the bride's mother, preparing the tables, plates etc. Their marriage place: a room in the basement of Seoul city hall, rented from the government for $60.

    Because of South Korea's average wedding expenditure last year at nearly $64,000, or about double that of the United States, more citizens are spurning lavish events for smaller ceremonies as the economy becomes slower. And as more parents are getting older and closer to retiring they have less money to splurge.

    South Korean weddings are typically a show of status. There are hundreds of guests and there are expensive gifts. The average payment, from a survey by wedding planner Duo, excludes the cost of preparing a house, which was 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 the $10,000 cost of their recent wedding themselves.

Huge marriage costs prompt more young people to delay marriage, and as a result children also. This has made worse one of the world's lowest birth rates in a country that is getting older: the fastest in the developed world.

    To boost marriage rates from the lowest rate ever in  2014, the government is renting out public buildings cheaply.

The trend began to become popular last year, and was encouraged also 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  farm wheat field 150 km from Seoul, and they had less than 50 guests.

    Kim and Cho, who sell indoor lighting online, saved money on the marriage place. And they bought Cho's wedding dress online for $100. A two-week honeymoon to Paris used up half their spending.

    Weddings became lavish because South Koreans were including traditions from Korea and the West into one said Lee Sung-hee, a senior planner at Duo, the country's largest matchmaking and wedding consultation company.

    But that is changing as the average age at marriage increases. The small wedding trend means also parents can have decreased stress. This is because South Koreans in their 50s and 60s have the most debt in a country where household debt ranks among the world's highest.

    Half of Duo's contacts and questions come from couples wanting small weddings. This is an increase of nearly three times from 2008.  As couples to be married get older, they can feel confident to disagree with conventional culture and their parents' requests more easily.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.

A=2, B=1, C=8, D=5, E=7, F=3, G=4, H=6

1. By tradition in Korea, the mother or wife controls the family’s expenditure.

2. I wanted to pay, but he spurned my offer, saying that he wanted to pay today.

3. The teacher lavished praise on the students for their hard work.  

4. Once a year we splurge by having dinner at an expensive hotel.

5. Mercedes cars are a status symbol.

6. My uncle prompted me to study something that I was very interested in doing.

7. Our plane was delayed because of bad weather.  

8. Our team was boosted by having someone join who was very good.  

    

Some questions using the new words/phrases. Try to use the words/phrases in your answer.

1. Do you agree that average expenditure was $64,000? What is the expenditure of people you know?

2. Do you know anyone who has spurned spending a lot of money on a wedding? Why?

3. How lavish would you like to be on a wedding? When do you think it is okay to be lavish and when not to be?

4. Describe a time when you splurged money on something?

5. What do you think of the Korean actor WonBin’s wedding of not having high status?

6. Do you think more people will be prompted to have smaller weddings in the future?

7. Do you know somebody who has delayed having children? Why?

8. What do you think is needed to boost Korea’s economy?