This is my friend and co-worker Wendy and I. Today was her wedding day and she got married at Dinkum Wedding Hall. It's a place where more than one wedding can happen at once, and there is a Korean buffet restaurant on the premises. That's where the reception was held. Korean weddings are a little bit different from American weddings. First of all, there is no wedding party, and at this particular wedding, the bride and groom did not exchange rings. What I found most surprising was that there wasn't much of a to-do made about the bride walking down the aisle. One minute Wendy was at the entrance to the wedding hall, seated and posing for pictures, with family and friends milling about and then the next minute she and her husband to-be were walking down the aisle with people rushing up at the last second to get a look at them as they made their way to the altar. At the altar was a monitor where baby pictures of the bride and groom were shown to her audience of family and friends. For her friends at L&S it was standing room only, and I had to stand on my toes to watch the nuptials from behind the very last row. The couple exchanged vows, some through tears (aww) and sung to each other. The entire ceremony was in Korean, obviously, so I could only guess at what they were saying to each other. It's times like these that I know I'm really a foreigner and that even though I was there, participating in the wedding as a guest, I still felt like I was on the outside.

After the reception we moved into the restaurant to eat. The bride and groom were not present. I followed Ally, one of my other co-workers, into the huge restaurant that had tables lining the walls in a U-shape one long table in the middle, and two separate dining rooms on each side. I had some chapjae (noodles), fried mushrooms, spinach salad, fried rice, and some of the best kimchi I've ever tasted.