By Lauren and Haney

We live in a globalizing world with diversity reaching every last corner of the globe, and that’s why it was important for us to integrate different cultures into our wedding.  We saw this as a chance to bring together our unique backgrounds, while honoring our family and friends. Putting a cultural twist on our ceremony has been both educational and exciting, too!

We built events and details into the big day that add these cultural touches. It was important to us, but beyond that, the multi-cultural integration makes our day approachable for all of our guests. We want our guests to feel special—something we wrote in our vision, and we wanted a day where there was something for everyone.

So we decided to integrate military and Korean traditions: Haney is currently in the US Navy, and he has Korean heritage; Lauren has lived in Korea for three years and thought of the idea of integrating a Korean wedding ceremony—ironically something Haney didn’t know anything about! We have both spent extensive time abroad, and we value our international experiences.

We incorporated all the cultures that are important to us and our guests, and we ultimately decided that we would integrate traditional faith values with a Catholic service, respect to military service through a sword arch, and the international experience and bridge building through a Korean “Paebeck” ceremony for very personal reasons:

Catholic Ceremony: Lauren has grown up in a Catholic community, and we are excited to honor this tradition on our big day. When looking at spaces to host this event we were interested in non-denominational spaces that focused on inter-faith education.

Military Sword Arch: The sword arch is a formal ceremony, carried out by those currently in the Armed Forces and designed to salute the couple. The couple passes under the honorary arch of sabers just after they are announced as a couple. Haney decided we would take a different approach than typical on the sword arch by making it multi-service (i.e., Army, Air Force, and Navy) and dual-gender to pay tribute to the future look of the military.  Having women in the sword arch was especially important.

Korean “Paebaek” Ceremony: The Korean traditional dress and the bowing and tea ceremonies represent the payment of respect to elders; the tossing of dates and chestnuts represent ancient legends, and the number caught by the couple project the number of children the new couple will have; and the comical carrying of the bride and mothers by the groom represents strength. You can learn more here: http://mybridestory.com/paebaek/

These were some of the big ticket multi-cultural pieces we integrated into our wedding ceremony and reception.  But the little details followed suit, too:

• A corkboard world map with pins indicating where each guest is from at the wedding;
• A map on their website that highlights from where our guests are flying
• Tables numbered in three different languages—English, Arabic and Korean
• Korean traditional wedding duck guest favors, each handcrafted and purchased by Lauren abroad. They are tied with “hanji” Korean traditional paper.
• Russell Stover chocolates for the guests from Lauren’s hometown.
• Use of stationery designed by the couple and printed in Hong Kong

Adding an international flair has been fun and really helps us to bridge cultures with guests near and far as we join our two families together.  Doing this was important for us and aligned with the big picture vision we put together, and we would definitely recommend that you find ways to bring together the pieces of both of your lives in a way that connects to your guests.

Next week follow our story to learn how we found the ideal venues to host these ceremonies and accompanying details.