How did he get the wedding package and groom’s suit down to the 1-million-won range on a 5-million-won budget? [It’s My First Time as a Husband]

[Financial News]

As soon as the consultation about the studio, dress and makeup package ended, a consultation about the groom’s formalwear followed. At wedding expos, consultations about the groom’s suit, wedding gifts, appliances and furniture are often held alongside those about the studio, dress and makeup package. Both of the wedding expos I visited were set up in a corner of the appliance section at large shopping malls. The setup allowed couples to get consultations on studio photography, wedding dresses and makeup, then purchase wedding gifts and appliances as well—all in one place. By contrast, specialist wedding-planning businesses clustered around Gangnam and Hak-dong appeared to offer consultations only on the studio, dress and makeup package.
For the groom’s suit, two main options were presented, depending on the fabric. Italian fabric is relatively soft and thin, I was told, making it suitable for everyday wear after the wedding. British fabric, on the other hand, is stiff and firm; it is a little less comfortable to move around in, but reportedly gives the suit a sharper look. After choosing a country, there were three more options from each country, depending on quality. The consultant laid out six types of fabric for men’s formalwear, each cut into a 2-centimeter square.
Italian fabrics started at 1.1 million won, with options at around 1.3 million and 1.5 million won. British fabrics started at 1.3 million won and went up to 1.5 million and 1.8 million won.When people are given several options, they tend not to choose the cheapest one.That tendency is even stronger in Korea, a Confucian culture that places great importance on saving face.Even so, I said, “I’ll go with the Italian fabric—the cheapest option.” But, as it turned out, the cheapest line was sold out, the consultant said, and the available options started at 1.3 million won for Italian fabric and 1.5 million won for British fabric.
If you think the price is too high, you can simply decide not to buy. But if you feel you have no choice because there are no options you’d be happy with, you get caught in a structural contradiction. As I wrestled with the decision, the persuasive pitch that had surely won over countless prospective grooms in Korea came into play.“If you have a suit made, we’ll give you two custom shirts with your initials on them. We’ll also make a pair of handmade shoes to fit your feet perfectly. And we’ll lend you a suit to wear for the studio shoot, and include a bow tie and tie for the wedding day.”For a moment, the calculator in my head malfunctioned. I had initially thought, “Paying somewhere in the mid-1-million-won range for a suit I’ll wear for just a few minutes on the wedding day is way too much.” But my thinking shifted to, “If I count each custom shirt as 100,000 won and a pair of shoes as 300,000 won, and I have to buy a tie and bow tie anyway, maybe it isn’t that expensive?”
“You can get a full refund within a week anyway, so just put down the deposit for now. If you leave a deposit today, we can give you a few more benefits, too.”
Though I prided myself on having sensible spending habits, I too deposited 100,000 won for the reservation, almost as if I were under a spell.


When I got home, I talked with my fiancée about the studio, dress and makeup package. To be clear, my wife is Thai. Since most of the guests at our wedding in Korea would be mine (the groom’s), apart from the bride’s family, we decided to have a modest celebration rather than a lavish one.Broadly speaking, a typical wedding package in Korea—studio photography, a dress and makeup—plus a suit for the groom seemed to cost around 3 million won or more for the bride’s package and about 1.5 million won for the groom’s suit. With extra costs, we would probably have to budget around 5 million won.After discussing it with my fiancée, I told the package providers and formalwear shop where we had put down deposits that we were canceling, and got the deposits refunded. We then made use of the advantages of an international marriage to cut the cost of the studio, dress and makeup package by at least half.



First, my fiancée bought her wedding dress in Thailand and sent it to Korea by international courier. The dress cost 8,000 baht (320,000 won), and shipping cost 3,500 baht (140,000 won).
We also had the studio shoot done in Thailand. Before the wedding, I had a chance to visit where my in-laws and my wife’s older sister’s family live, so we arranged the shoot then. My in-laws are in Krabi, in southern Thailand, while the shoot took place in Surat Thani, a city about a two-hour drive from Krabi. We were satisfied with everything, from the shoot preparation through the day itself, at a business called “PhatLoong wedding.” First, we visited the business the afternoon before the shoot to try on wedding dresses.Unlike in Korea, there was no tiered pricing for dresses that required extra fees, nor a rule preventing the groom from taking photos of the dresses his bride had tried on.It was in a somewhat out-of-the-way area rather than a big city like Bangkok, and the entire three-story building was used as a shop. It was large, with an enormous number of dresses. We chose my wife’s wedding dress the day before and decided to rent a suit and shoes for me, the groom.

We visited the business again early the next morning. While my wife was having her makeup done for two hours, I sat in a massage chair in a separate room and looked at my phone. After her makeup was finished, we spent about two hours taking photos in the studio on the building’s third floor. The solo shots of my wife went smoothly, but I’m a little uncomfortable being photographed, so I had to take quite a lot of shots at the photographer’s direction. After about two hours of posing for photos in various ways, the shoot for the day was over.Unlike in Korea, we didn’t have to pay an extra fee to receive all the original photos.Photoshop editing of 10 photos to use on the wedding day was also free.
After receiving thousands of original photos, we selected 10 to have edited for the wedding day. We then used those 10 photos for the wedding and our mobile invitation without making any further requests. The total cost of the studio shoot was around 11,000 baht (440,000 won).According to the Korea Consumer Agency, the median price of a studio, dress and makeup package is 2.92 million won. A dress-and-makeup package without the studio shoot costs 1.6 million won, while the studio shoot alone usually costs around 1.3 million won. By traveling abroad for the studio shoot, we brought the cost down to about one-third.
For makeup on the wedding day, I went to a shop near the venue instead of having a makeup artist come to us. The base price was 300,000 won, with an additional 100,000 won, for a total of around 400,000 won.
The studio shoot cost 440,000 won, the wedding dress and shipping cost 460,000 won, and makeup cost 400,000 won, bringing the total for the studio, dress and makeup package to around 1.3 million won. After the wedding, I sold my wife’s wedding dress on Karrot for 50,000 won.
Advice from people who had married before me also played a part in making this decision.“You’ll be so caught up in everything on the wedding day that you probably won’t remember much anyway. Rather than adding pointless expenses to the wedding, it’s better to use that money to go somewhere nicer for your honeymoon or buy appliances (or furniture),” they said.

I found an even cheaper solution for the groom’s suit. Thinking about it, in nearly 20 years of attending weddings as a guest, I had never wondered whether the groom’s suit was made from Italian or British fabric. In fact, at weddings I was usually looking at the bride and rarely paid attention to what the groom was wearing. Unless the groom showed up in jeans and a tank top, what he wore was simply a white shirt and a black suit—nothing more, nothing less. I tried to recall what the grooms had worn at the dozens, even hundreds, of weddings I’d attended, and couldn’t remember a single one.Once I concluded that “nobody is interested in me, the groom, anyway,” I realized there was no need to pay a high price for the groom’s suit.I went to an outlet in Guro Digital Complex and bought a black off-the-rack suit for 250,000 won, black shoes from the shoe shop next to the suit store for 150,000 won, and a belt for 100,000 won.
My experience was possible, of course, because of the unusual circumstances of an international marriage.But in Korea’s studio, dress and makeup market, sweet talk about “a once-in-a-lifetime wedding” has created a strange system that leaves consumers in the weaker position.It’s hard to understand why people are forbidden from photographing dresses they try on for a studio shoot, or why they have to pay extra to view the original studio photos. If you’re planning a “making memories” trip to Southeast Asia or elsewhere before your wedding, it could be an alternative to do a little legwork and consider having your studio shoot done there.
■ The “It’s My First Time as a Husband” series will cover the experiences and social issues of a reporter who married later in life at 40, including preparing for marriage, the wedding, childbirth and raising children.[email protected] Lee Hwan-ju Reporter