The wedding of Lee Min-su (far right) and Shin Hye-seong (far left). Provided by Arumjigi

Instead of a shiny tiara, the bride sported a black jokduri (a bride’s headpiece for a traditional Korean wedding) decorated with red, green and yellow gems. Replacing the blush were yeonji gonji (red circles) on her cheeks - one on each cheek. And instead of a long, white gown, she wore a hanbok (traditional Korean garment) that consists of a light green top with gold jacquard-like patterns and a coral skirt.

The bride is Kim So-hyang, a 30-year-old web producer at a Korean media institution.

“I didn’t want my wedding to be one of those cookie-cutter ceremonies at Korean wedding halls,” she told the Korea JoongAng Daily, on the eve of her wedding on June 9. “Everything in today’s world is moving so fast and is highly competitive, and Korean weddings have also become speedy and all about who spent how much on what. But my fiancee and I wanted to do this [the wedding] slow yet in a right Korean way.”

Kim and her fiancee - Kim Yeong-jun, an oriental medicine professional - tied the knot at the Korea House, a complex of beautiful hanok (traditional Korean building), in Jung District, central Seoul, near Namsangol Hanok Village in Mount Namsan. It is one of several places in Seoul that offer sophisticated traditional weddings. “Plus, tuxedo and gown didn’t look that fabulous to us anyway. We liked durumagi [traditional overcoat] and hwalot [traditional wedding gown] better,” Kim said.

Wedding ceremonies in Korea have emerged as a major social problem in Korea in recent years, as they force people to spend huge sums of money for formalities.

Last year, the Chosun Ilbo ran a long-term series titled, “Wedding March at the Cost of Parents’ Tears” reporting on the problems of Korean weddings. They introduced extreme cases in which parents would sell the assets they accumulated over their entire lives to give their children the wedding of their dreams.

According to the National Human Rights Commission, Koreans spent an average of 17.22 million won ($15,192) on ceremonies alone in 2012. Some other polls say that the figure surpasses 20 million won.

This has prompted the former prime minister of Korea, Kim Hwang-sik, to call on the Korean people to re-think the country’s excessive spending on the wedding process as well as a wedding culture that is “show-offish and wasteful.”

“The government is doing what it can to reduce empty and vain formalities,” he said in April 2012. “But that’s not enough. The people, the society, religious groups and mass media must all put their heads together to ponder ways to improve Korea’s wedding culture.”

There have been attempts to lessen the burden of wedding costs. For starters, the government has been offering more affordable ceremonies at places like the New Seoul City Hall, the National Library of Korea and even a part of the Blue House. One of those attempts is a traditional wedding.

	The bride and the groom wait in separate quarters behind a screen for the ceremonies to start. Provided by Arumjigi