"No Photos of the Wedding Dress Fitting. The Groom Has to Draw It" [First-Time Husband]

[Financial News]"Sir, here are a notebook and pencil as a souvenir for your Wedding Package consultation."In early January 2025, at a wedding fair I visited seven months before my wedding, a consultation manager handed me a notebook and pencil. When I asked, as a groom-to-be, 'Why do I need this?' the manager replied,"Oh, you didn't know? When trying on wedding dresses, photography is not allowed for the groom. You need to take a good look and draw them carefully so you can help your bride choose later."I thought I must have misheard. Was I really understanding this correctly? This was not a matter of 100,000 won or even 1 million won, but of paying much more than that to take photos for a few hours. You try on a dress rented for just one or two hours for a studio shoot, but you cannot even take a picture of it? What country’s rule is that?
As I listened to the explanation, I began to doubt my brain more than my ears. It was not that my hearing had malfunctioned and I had misheard something. The only explanation was that my brain was malfunctioning, because the things I was hearing kept getting stranger and stranger."If you sign with another place, you can only choose the regular dresses. If you want to wear a black-label dress, which is more premium, you have to pay extra. But if you sign the contract today, we can let you choose a black dress without the extra fee as a special offer."It sounded like saying, 'Other shops put fish in their fish-shaped pastries, but ours have red bean paste, so you can eat them.' In other words, they were basically saying you have to wear the black-label dress. A wedding is, in most cases, a once-in-a-lifetime event. Who would want to wear a dress that is not 'premium' but 'inferior'? And that was not the end of it.
"If you go on a dress tour, the first place is free. But if you visit additional vendors, each extra fitting costs 55,000 won per shop."
Even if I buy fake Nike sneakers in Dongdaemun, I can check out a few stores. Yet for a wedding dress I will wear only once in my life, I have to pay extra just to try it on. Still, I could understand that from the agency’s perspective, it takes effort too."If you have studio photos taken, you will only receive edited photos after Photoshop. If you want all the original files, that will cost extra as well. If you want more album pages than the basic number, that also costs more."By then, I realized that the old saying 'the customer is king' becomes little more than 'too bad' in the Wedding Package market.You rent the dress with your own money, at a rather steep price, hire the studio, and take photos of your own couple. Yet you cannot see the original files. It felt like a sales tactic that lures customers with 'Wedding Package at 2 million to 3 million won' on social media, only to pile on extra charges later.


When I used to cover the Korea Consumer Agency, I thought the number of complaints related to the wedding market was surprisingly low. But once I became a consumer in that market myself, I understood why. Perhaps people decide it is better to let things slide with a 'what’s good is good' attitude rather than argue with vendors over prices and services for a wedding that happens only once in a lifetime. Just as food at a tourist restaurant that relies on one-time visitors often tastes worse than at a neighborhood regular’s place,it is a disastrous collaboration between vendors trying to squeeze as much profit as possible from customers who will never return, and consumers who do not want to start a fight while preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime wedding.
According to data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics, the number of marriage registrations in 2025 reached 240,326. In the same year, the Korea Consumer Agency received about 1,076 complaints related to wedding halls and wedding preparation agency services, including Wedding Package services. Not every registered couple has a wedding hall ceremony or uses a wedding preparation agency, butby simple proportion, only about four to five couples out of every 1,000 filed complaints with the KCA about wedding halls and Wedding Package-related issues.Anyone who has used the service might wonder whether a complaint rate of less than 1% is strangely not that high.
I remembered something a former acquaintance once said: "The moment I pay for, or decide to pay for, a prepaid service or product, I consider myself completely the weaker party."For example, if you join a matchmaking agency and pay money, it is wiser to keep the manager happy, perhaps with KakaoTalk Gift items, and improve the quality of service you receive, rather than pick a fight and risk getting worse service later. The same logic applies to a gym: after signing up for dozens of personal training sessions, it is better to maintain a good relationship with the trainer than to cancel midstream over poor service and pay a penalty. Even if you are just eating one meal at a restaurant, if you fight with the owner, the customer cannot know whether the kitchen might spit into the food. Filing a complaint with the KCA would not restore the unpleasant memories from the wedding preparation process anyway.
Come to think of it, I also remembered hearing in the news that if an outdoor shoot is scheduled, the engaged couple must prepare boxed lunches for the cameraman. I had also heard rumors that, especially at some highly sought-after studios in Gangnam District and Cheongdam, the quality of the photos changes depending on the price of the boxed lunch.
Even studio shoots came with additional option fees depending on whether the session was indoors or outdoors. In a world where everything is an option and every choice costs extra, I was almost overwhelmed by gratitude when I heard that if the bride rents a wedding dress, the groom’s tuxedo and shoes can be rented for free.


After the explanation of the studio shoot ended, the consultant moved on to the wedding dress for the ceremony on the wedding day. In a very thick album, there were many photos of handsome, beautiful couples who looked like celebrities. Depending on the bride’s preferred style, the consultant went through various options: glittery dresses with lots of shimmer, styles with exposed shoulders and neckline, simple styles, and glamorous styles. The explanation was complicated, but the message was clear: pretty dresses cost extra, and seeing more dresses required selecting additional options.
Makeup was similar. Several photos of stunning models, the kind you might see on Instagram even though they are not your friends, were presented. The structure was that you had to reserve and choose the makeup studio you wanted from among them.Once the rough explanation was over, the consultant strongly urged me to make an initial reservation.The explanation was that if I paid a 100,000 won deposit and went home to think about it, I could cancel at any time within a week.When I saw the Instagram ads, I clearly remembered the phrase 'Wedding Package 2 million won,' but the rough estimate I heard that day suggested that the Wedding Package alone would easily exceed 3 million to 5 million won.
According to the Korea Consumer Agency, the median price of a Wedding Package is 2.92 million won. For 'Dress and Makeup' without the studio shoot, the price is 1.6 million won, which means the studio shoot alone usually costs about 1.3 million won. But in the actual wedding market, the perceived price rises exponentially depending on the many options.
As an alternative to these opaque wedding preparation costs, the Korea Fair Trade Commission revised its 'Notice on Important Labeling and Advertising Matters' starting in November last year. It requires wedding halls to disclose rental fees, meal costs, decoration fees, and Wedding Package prices in advance. Violations can result in fines of up to 100 million won.A bill titled the 'Act on the Management of the Wedding Service Industry' (the Wedding Package Act) is currently pending in the National Assembly, but whether it will pass and when it will take effect remain uncertain.After listening to a flood of explanations about the Wedding Package for 30 minutes to an hour, I felt completely dazed. The only reason I could keep my sanity was that the groom’s role in choosing the Wedding Package was about as important as the left hand of Kang Baek-ho taking a rookie shot. As the saying goes, 'The left hand is just there to help.' The decision belonged entirely to the bride.(To be continued)
■ The [First-Time Husband] series will cover the reporter’s experiences with wedding preparation, marriage, childbirth, parenting, and related social issues after marrying late, at age 40.
[email protected] Lee Hwan-ju Reporter