How to Get Hitched in Korea

This post is no BS and straight to the point on how to get married in Korea. First off, congratulations! :) If everything goes smoothly (which we hope it does), getting married in Korea is actually quite easy. 

Steps for getting married in Korea (2 foreigners. Not sure of the steps if you are marrying a Korean):

1. No matter what your nationality, you need to obtain an Affidavit of Eligilibity of Marriage. You can obtain this from your Embassy. If you are a US citizen, you need to jump on the embassy's website and download a form to fill out and then schedule an appoitment to go to the embassy.  You will need the form, and if you were married before, your original divorce papers or notarized copies. If not, you just need your form. The cost is $50.  They take cash in form of Korean Won or an American credit card (no international fees or anything will be charged on it). If you are a South African Citizen, you don't need to physcially go to your embassy. There is a form you can fill out and mail to teh embassy. They embassy (they only send out diplomatic mail once a month) then sends the form to SA where they will notarize the form and send it back to you. That can take anywhere from a few weeks to 3 months. We needed the document faster so we went through docs4expats.com, paid a bit more money, and had the documents in hand in a week. But if you can wait and want to save some cash, it's easy to go through the embassy. 

2. Great! You now have the documents you need in hand. Now you just need to go to any local "gu" office. It can be in Seoul, your town, another town, doesn't matter. We chose to do it in Seoul since we were up there for the weekend anyway. The gu office in Seoul we went to is behind the US Embassy. The MOFAT office where you get your marriage certificate apostilled then behind the gu office. As you walk in, there's an information person there who speaks English to help you. She may or may not give you the form you need to fill out. Fill the form out, take a number and wait. We didn't have to wait. You will need 2 witnesses to sign the form. You can find the form online (I don't know how but you can ask a Korean friend. We found this out later) and fill it out and have any 2 people sign as witnesses at anytime and then just bring that in wiht you to the gu office. We asked 2 random Koreans in the office that day (as there were no foriegners there to sign for us at the time).  Last resort, that does work! Make sure you have your Affidavit of Marriage of Eligibilty, your passport, and 200 won with you (each copy is 200 won).  Go back to the desk with everything filled out and hand it to the disgruntled government worker there and she or he will do a few things then hand you a piece of paper in Korean and that's it! You are now legally married! Done and done! 

3. The next thing you want to do is since the certificate is in Korean, you will need to get it apostilled. We wondered around for a while and walked in circles until we found where we were supposed to go. If you are at the gu office in Seoul, here's how you get to the MOFAT office. Walk out of hte building and turn left. At the next street (it's small) you come to take a left. Walk down about 50 meters adn on teh opposite side fo the road is the Korea BD building.  It's the building next to teh very obvious Tax office. Walk in teh BD building and go to the 4th floor. Turn left out of hte elevator and go to the first office on teh right. The little old man speaks English adn will help you.  Take a number, give them your certficate, pay 1000 won per apostille, wait 20 min (we hit up the Starbucks across teh street) and you're done. We thought they would also translate it to English but they don't do that. More information on that to come. :) 

4. Walk outside, jump up and down, kiss your husband or wife and do a happy dance.  You are now married! 

***The procedure if you are marrying a Korean is a little different. I know you have to wait 3-5 days for your certificate and the procedure for the Korean before hand is a bit different. Sorry for not having that info.

CONGRATS!!! 

A Yankee and Boerseun Get Hitched (AKA Wedding Weekend)

Being from two different sides of the world and then deciding to travel for a year and then who knows where life will take us after that, Hawie and I had been talking about dun, dun, dun.....getting married. After a, Lindsay had no idea it was coming, proposal in September over Chuseok (Korea's Thanksgiving and one of their biggest holidays, also when we met each other for the first time), we decided to sign the marriage certificate and get hitched on 11/11! There were a number of different reasons but reason number one was...it was easy to remember!

Day 1

 After obtaining all the documents needed and inquiring exactly how we do this signing of the papers in Korea thing, we were off for a great weekend in Seoul to sign the papers on Monday. Up early and out the door and on the bus we go off to the train station. A little graugy and neither of us morning people, this was not an easy task. Luckily we could sleep an hour train ride up to Seoul. First stop was to check out a hiking/outdoors retailer area in Seoul to find Hawie (he is what they call "big size" in Korea) hiking boots for Nepal. Nepal and hiking the Annapurna circuit is our first stop on our gap year of travel.  It was still a bit early so we grabbed some coffee and started wandering around the area. Both of us had been up there on separate occasions but it had been years and we couldn't quite remember where the shops were. We wandered through an open market with fresh fruit, veggies, fish, goods and spices. There are many of these in Korea. We like to just meander around the one near us in Daejeon. This one was bustling and huge and full of energy on a Saturday morning. We came across some street food. They would grind the beans and then take the ground beans which make a paste, and mix it with some other spices and then fry it up. We bought one of those. Decided it tasted like cross between a Korean pancake (pa-jeon) and a hash brown. It was good but a bit greasy for that hour of the morning. After that we decided to keep searching. It didn't take long and we came across all the outdoor shops. We just started going into each one. Really they have mostly the same stuff so doesn't matter too much. The first shop we went to the guy spoke a little English, that was a plus! And on top of that, he had boots in Hawie's size! Well....him or his cousin down the street. In Korea if they don't have a size they seem to pick up the phone, call their buddy or cousin or whatever, and 5 minutes later, wah lah! Your size and model is in  hand! The guy helped Hawie alot and he found boots he really liked! Score! Now I had to find boots. That didn't take very long either. The little old man that helped us didn't speak any English but was super cool. Bonus! Boots were finished pretty early on.

It was now lunch time so we opted to go back to the market and see if we could get a bite to eat there. There were many little stands in the middle with everything from blood sausage (soon-day) to dumplings (man-du) to soups (kal-gook-su) to Bi bim bab (rice and fresh veggies with a spicy red pepper paste sauce action goign on). We decided on bi bim bab. You squeeze in next to random Koreans, order 2 bowls, watch the little old woman put the veggies in and rice and that's it! Sit and eat and try to not bump elbows too much with the quiet Korean sitting next to you. It was by far the best and freshest bi bim bab I have ever had in Korea. It totally hit the spot! And quite the experience as well! We had a short conversation with the woman running the stand and a couple next to us. With full bellies and boots in hand, we head back down to the subway to retrieve our other bags and head to the hotel we booked. I got a killer deal on a really nice hotel. It was a bit far from most things but totally worth it!

After getting a bit turned around, we finally found the hotel and checked in. Sat down, took a nice deep sigh of relief and excitement and enjoyed some TV and a beer while we regrouped. There was a jazz club we really wanted to go to. We were planning on doing that on Sunday night but Sunday was looking to be a very full day and we decided we may be too tired. We were a bit tired but not totally pooped out so we decided after some relaxing to head out to the club across town. We got there just in time and snagged a seat and table in the back by the entrance. We had some dinner and a few drinks and enjoyed some more music and called it good. It was a really nice evening! We were quite tired by now. Hawie suggested we take a taxi back to the hotel. Keep in mind the hotel is across Seoul. Seoul is huge. I reluctantly said yes, as my feet hurt a little from my shoes. We get into a taxi, give the driver the address on the business card from the hotel and crossed our fingers. The taxi driver didn't seem to know. He called the hotel and asked and then seemed to have it sorted and put the address in his GPS. A little background on the how people drive in Korea. If you walk out of car and you don't have whip lash, it's a miracle. They drive like this....lots of gas on, gas off, gas on, gas off. It's terribly uncomfortable if you are a passenger. Some drivers are more aggressive with the gas on and off and it can be quite miserable. Unfortunately we had a "lead gas on, gas off foot." Not only that, there were 3 turns he missed on the highway. A 33 minute, 20,000 won, miserable taxi ride later we landed at our hotel. I would've kissed the ground if it hadn't rained. The subway would've been a bit more hassle but cheaper and faster. But Hawie was trying to make it nice! Shame! Too bad you can't pick your taxi drivers by how well they drive for their passengers! Over all an awesome day!

Day 2

The next day we got up super early again! We were off to Lotte World. It's like Korea's Disney World, sort of. It's the largest indoor amusement park in the world (of def Asia). We both love roller coasters so we thought we would be kids again and go to Lotte World. But the lines can be really long, as the only official day off that Koreans have is Sunday, we wanted to get there early and beat the lines. We had a list of the best rides from a buddy of ours, Ian. Hawie has been there once before. We got there and it was huge and awesome! First up, an indoor roller coaster. We were super excited and ran to where it was. We were soon let down as it was closed for repairs. But that was ok! We then scurried off to the next ride. It was more like Pirates for the Caribbean ride at Disney World but better! Super awesome. So we did a few of those rides all inside then decided to move outside. It was a cold day. Not super terribly cold but enough to be uncomfortable. There was an outside roller coaster too so we weren't that bummed about the indoor one being out of commission...until we got outside and the outside one was out of commission too. That was okay there were other rides! We then headed over to the gyro swing (see picture below). One of the most thrilling rides I've ever been on! It was awesome and made up for the roller coasters. Next up was a ride we had no idea what it was. Turns out it was a mix between the space roller coaster ride at Disney World and the tea cups. That one and gyro swing tied for first place! If the line wasn't so long and we weren't so hungry, we would have gone again!

We grabbed some weird pizza for lunch then headed back inside. Luckily, just in time for the parade! YEE haw!! We got a decent place to stand and had a good ol' time watching the "Happy Christmas" parade full of foreigners in costumes. A bit weird but super fun. After the parade, the Koreans tend to scatter and it's a mess so we just stood still, waited and "made ourselves look big" for our survival as they cleared out. It worked! Everyone came out alive and no freak outs! We then headed to the Korean Culture Museum. Yes, they also have one of those in the biggest amusement park in the world! It was really cool actually! After the Museum we were running low on energy so we decided to go grab a drink and re energize before we headed back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel we had a quiet evening as we were sooo pooped out from 2 full days of awesome-ness and being on the go, we ended up ordering in pizza and watching a movie. It was perfect after all the excitement of the weekend. Plus we had to get up super early the next day to head to the "gu" (city hall type deal) to sign the marriage certificate.

Day 3

Off to the "gu" office we go. Up early, excited, packed up and ready to go! We dressed up, with layers as it was one of the coldest days we had so far. The gu office was pretty easy to find as it was behind the US Embassy. We knew we would need two witnesses to sign for us while we were there but as it was a Monday, we did not have any witnesses. A friend of mine had gotten married in Seoul years ago and said her and her husband just grabbed the foreign couple behind them in line and they signed for witnesses. We figured push comes to shove we would do the same thing.  We get to the office and the information lady was nice and greeted us and directed us where to go. We took a number and she gave us a form to fill out while we waited. There was no one in front of us in line so our number came up pretty quick. We weren't finished filling out the form but rushed over to the desk anyway. The lady behind the desk was not happy about life. She threw her nose up at us and just handed us back the form. So we took it aside and frantically filled it out.  We then took the form back to her. She again threw her nose up at us, said "witnesses" and handed us back the form. We were very polite, looked around, and to our dismay the room was vacant of any foreigners. We looked at her and asked "what should we do?" She shrugged and was absolutely no help. We looked at each other and smiled and said "ok, here we go!" We asked the kind information lady who spoke English to sign for one witness and she did and giggled! One down, one to go! We took a breath, looked around and luckily I spotted a nice looking Korean woman who appeared to be about our age. I scurried over to her and asked her to be our witness. To our surprise she spoke English and was very kind and signed the paper. We then rushed back to the "friendly" lady behind the desk and gave her the form for the third time. She said ok and started to process the paperwork. We snapped a "selfie" of us in the office.  She asked how many copies we wanted, we paid her less than a dollar (or much less than 10 rand) and she handed us the copies of our marriage certificate. We smiled, kissed each other and thanked her. She actually smiled and told us "congratulations!"

Whoop! We weren't quite relaxed yet. Next step was to go to one more place to get the our newly acquired document translated to English and apostilled (basically a notarization that is recognized world wide). It's chilly and we are now off to figure out where this office is. We wander around a bit determined to find it on our own. We finally stop on a side street corner to regroup. As we did that, a Korean woman walks out and in almost perfect English asks us if we are lost. We giggle and reply accordingly. We ask her if she knew where the office is, she said she didn't but looked around with us.  She was helpful and sweet but we didn't find the office. Finally, I said "Let's go back to Fort Knox (US Embassy) and ask one of the police officers where it is!" Hawie agreed and we were off back again around the corner. It's a pretty sure bet the police officers speak English also probably have to patrol the office we were headed to as well.  Luckily they could point us to the correct building and we were off across the street and down a ways again for the third time. We finally get to where we need to be and get into the building (the guards were quite confused when they asked why we needed to enter) and get to the help desk! yay! We get there, the woman greets us and whips out a map (sigh) and shows us where we need to go...back across the street, around the corner and down across the way...again! At least we were there a few times before looking for it so we had an idea. We get all the way back over there and turns out it was the building almost directly across from where were were standing when the woman asked us if we were lost. Turns out the Ministry of Foreign Trade (MOFAT) where we got the map is not the actual office to get done what we needed and they send everybody to the other building anyway. We giggled and walked in.  We took a number and they Koreans were very nice and helped us out! After handing them our stuff she said we had to wait about 20 minutes. At this point with all the excitement and confusion, we hadn't even eaten breakfast let alone drank coffee. Luck for us there was a Starbucks across the street! We headed over there, ordered, sat down, called the family one more time, and sighed and took a breath! After we were now full of coffee and a bagel, we headed back over to pick up what we thought would be our TRANSLATED, apostilled marriage certificate. We get back over there and pick up our stuff. It was apostilled which was cool but no where in English did it have what it was. Ok...great! So we asked if they have a transltation (everywhere that we read said they have translated copy that thye give you when you are there). I don't know if it was the language barrier or what it was but they gave us a big negative on the English translation. Because the rest of the world is also fluent in Korean...COME ON KOREA! Because I'm sure if we need it for South Africa or the US at some point, they'll know EXACTLY what it says and what it is! We didn't even care at this point and knew there were lawyers who could translate and notarize it Daejeon. Of course they are much more expensive then what we thought the MOFAT office would be. But hey, you live and learn. So, if you need your document translated to English, the MOFAT office doesn't do it! ;) Not to mention the lawyer office across the street from where we got our certificate wanted $60 (about 620 ZAR) to do it. We shrugged it off for later, took another deep breath, smiled and said "hey, we're married!" : D

Next adventure we were off to take 'wedding' pictures at the traditional Korean Palace across the street. Still pretty chilly at this point we we didn't care and were off running. We had both been there a few times before so knew the layout and where we were off to! Hawie (the photographer), myself, the camera, tripod and remote control had a great time taking pictures! We set up the tripod and used a remote to take the pictures. We had a great time "posing" for the camera all around the palace! We are married, got the pics and now it's time for food! :) We were orginally going to go back to Itaewon and get some brunch but were cold, a bit tired and had to work the next day. So we opted for eating near Seoul Station and then jumping on a train home! Which is exactly what we did!

When we got home, Hawie really wanted to get me a bouquet of flowers (he's a sweetheart). So we went to the local flower shop around hte corner from our house (Hawie also used to teach their little boy at his school) and he got my 11 white roses (as it was 11/11) and we headed home. We wanted to do one more photo shoot when we got home with Pepero and and the flowers. And that's what we did. Anytime Hawie can take pictures he is happier than a pig in 'poo'.  ;) We had our second photo shoot and a ton of fun! Then promoply changed out of our 'wedding apparel" and sat down and relaxed the rest of the evening after an incredibly unforgettable 3 day wedding adventure!!

It was an adventure and am awesome experience! We are lucky to have experienced it and lucky enough that we both had the patience, communication and understanding to adventure at getting married in a foreign country together!

 We hoped you enjoyed sharing our adventure together through the blog and thank you for reading!! :D