by Diane Farr
So for Seung and me, merely figuring out where Mommy and Daddy’s needs end and ours begin is hard. This takes much deciphering by both of us, together and individually, and then weekly when I ask him to please join me in therapy. Although this inability to find the line—of what I need versus what is expected of me at my wedding—is not uncommon in couples of the same race or varying ones, neither Seung nor I can completely remove ourself from thinking about how our wedding and our marriage will affect his family—specifically because of race. And not even because of any actions or postures his parents are currently taking but, again, because of who we are as people.
In actuality, Seung’s parents say nothing about their needs for our wedding. It even takes seven days until Seung gets his father on the phone after that first voice mail from Mammoth. Although this was unsettling to both of us initially, when Apa does call it’s immediately obvious that Seung had called a wrong number in Korea! His father has no clue that anything transpired between us, and when Seung tells him our news, his father is filled with excitement. I am suspicious during the call, and immediately after, and ... for most of our engagement, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Seung’s parents continue to pleasantly surprise me just as they have from the first day I met them.
SEUNG AND I ARE BOTH sure we want to get married over the course of a weekend, rather than just having a ceremony and reception in one day. At least two-thirds of our guests will need to fly to our big day—and that seems just too big a trip for just one day of celebrating. Plus, we got together as a couple at a destination wedding in Mexico and saw how bonded the entire group became. Seung and I are hoping that three days of activities and time together in a new place might do the same for our families—all of whom will be meeting for the first time at the rehearsal dinner in Mammoth.
Seung’s top priority for our nuptials is having as much of his family present as possible and mine is to put every single person in one hotel where there is absolutely no need (or possibility, if I can find a way) for anyone to drive drunk.
We discuss the possibility of a New York, D.C., or Los Angeles wedding, but the costs of a wedding in these cities seem prohibitive to both our main wishes for this day. Super early in our dating process we also decided not to take a trip to Seoul as a couple because, as Seung said at the time, “If we get married we will go to Korea then.” So now we also briefly consider having our entire wedding in Korea. But because we fear we wouldn’t get to enjoy the country because we would be so busy looking after friends and family, this plan dies a quick death, too. After which it seems like all of the places we call home are cut as contenders for the big day. Until the answer finally comes to us and it feels so obvious.
We will get married in Mammoth. In summer, when the snow is melted and the Tioga Pass is open, Mammoth is twenty minutes from Yosemite National Park. Despite the season, I have skied almost every Fourth of July there for the past ten years, so I know a late June wedding would allow friends to ski by day and attend wedding events by night, as well as fly-fish, hike, and horseback/motorcycle/snowmobile ride around the Sierra mountains and lakes. The best of both summer and winter seasons will be available to all. Plus, the plethora of national parks, as well as central and Northern California vacation options before or after our event, make us feel like a summer wedding on the mountain would be perfect for us and our guests.
UNFORTUNATELY, THERE IS NO air service into Mammoth. But if I could find a way to bring all the guests up to the mountain together, it would make my dream of a drive-free wedding a reality. So perhaps I could bus everyone to the mountain from Los Angeles? Five hours away! And then put every guest in the same lodge and have them walk to our events?
Yeah, not so much. After some initial inquiries, there is not one restaurant or venue in Mammoth that can hold even one hundred people for a meal. And we aren’t serving just one meal—we are planning on three: a Friday night rehearsal dinner, a Saturday night ceremony (then reception with dinner, followed by dancing), and a Sunday morning brunch. And keep in mind that this is the town where the entire hospitality industry seems to be sky-high on marijuana, so I can’t really assume they might step up their game for our wedding. Which leaves Seung and me with one massive option if we are actually going to commit to getting married here ... including not only busing in all the guests, but also bringing in all the food and staff for it, and building every event under marquis tents in open fields around the mountain.
Now, let’s face it, this kind of plan puts me on par with Julius Caesar where ambition is concerned. I only vaguely understood at the time that this kind of undertaking means worrying about things that no bride should ever have to think about. Like transporting porta-potties into a national forest, as well as six hundred chopsticks. Lest we forget secure parking in a mountain town for fifty-person tour buses and learning how to maintain a wedding cake in high altitude, as well as the life expectancy of fresh flowers in thin air. And emergency medical services for pregnant and elderly guests at ten thousand feet, bear whistles, alternative shoes for women in the grass, blankets in case of a cold spell, gondola transportation around snowy areas, lighting that can be installed the day of and moved to various locations over the course of a weekend. Oh, and shlepping generators, a wooden dance floor, a DJ, and his equipment into a field, and so many more incredibly daunting things that has nothing to do with what I am supposed to be worrying about.
And I mean really worrying about, like my recently divorced parents being in the same room together for the first time, and which of our religions to embrace for the ceremony and the rest of our lives, as well as how to include the Koreans and their language in some way so they might even understand what is happening as their son/ nephew/cousin gets married. And how I will get from this tiny town on the side of a volcanic hill all the way to Asia the next day.
Cue my mother, who steps in to forbid me from having my wedding in Mammoth! She insists that adding that much pressure onto Seung’s and my relationship is just me trying to sabotage our union. Which is probably true, but she might as well have signed a deposit check for the rental tents with that warning, because all I hear is: “You can’t handle this.” And that is all the inspiration I need to get started.
That’s a literal “I,” by the way. American wedding coordinators seem like babysitters for rich women and their mothers to me, who give everyone the same thing for every wedding, only packaged slightly differently according to assumed income. There is no way I am getting caught up in that mess. And in just my first five phone calls, it is immediately clear that using the word wedding when asking for a quote automatically doubles or triples the price of anything, from napkins to trash removal! So I decide then and there to arrange all of this myself, in between takes on my TV show, starting by telling vendors that I am running a conference in the Sierras.
AT ALL THE LOCATIONS we visited, the largest event held in Mammoth or the surrounding towns was for 150 people. Seung and I settle on pushing the envelope to two hundred guests. We agree that more will go wrong than right, but Seung’s first priority will be met and so will mine.
We decide to risk working with the stoners who run the actual ski facilities for just one of our events, albeit the big one—the wedding ceremony. Considering it will only be thirty minutes long and requires no food or drink, we think maybe they can handle it. If they get it right, we’ll become husband and wife at the midpoint of the mountain on an outdoor patio, fully walled in by glass. Our guests will have a 365-degree view of the entire mountain range, covered in snow, while basking in eighty-degree weather on our platform. The “catering manager” (and I use that term like “Santa Claus,” because that’s about how realistic a manager she was) is required only to turn the gondola on when my guests arrive, have 150 chairs available for my siblings and wedding party to set up the morning of the event, and have someone ready to push PLAY two times for music. Seems plausible even for a stoner pretending to know how to run an event, right?
&nbs
p; Probably not for a bride who is obsessive about paint in a threeroom condominium, though! Can you imagine how meticulous I’m going to be about a wedding I’ve waited until I was thirty-six years old to plan? So, to keep the control freak within me from freaking, I ask the best producer I know if I can pay her rate for the weekend to “produce” my wedding. She will be the director of the day, whom I will give a notebook to—detailing every fifteen minutes of all events from Friday to Sunday—along with a staff of production assistants from my television show, FBI-grade walkie-talkies that they can use to communicate with each other, four party buses and union drivers, all at her disposal to corral my guests. I’m also giving this producer all of my incredibly capable Irish relatives, who are the very definition of hardworking. She will have ten people available to her, alongside the five assistants, before every event to set up anything they need. Yes, controlling people are annoying—unless they’re really, really organized. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
No sweat! says the bride-to-be.
And really, I thought we could handle this. I know how to party and Seung knows how to wrangle. And unlike what we saw in both our parents’ marriages, we have an active interest in learning how to communicate with each other. So after our first fight about wedding logistics, I go out and buy two clown masks. From that point forward, anytime we discuss the wedding, we each have to wear a big red nose, huge ears, and a comb-over toupee. This never allows us to take ourselves too seriously when planning what is really just going to be an epic party.
* ONE OF THE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS SEUNG and I discuss, sans the clown getup, is religion. I had learned from Jennifer and Sonu, as well as Suzanne and David, that this discussion needed to happen.
Seung calls himself Catholic and I was raised as one, attending Mass every week. But Christianity was not a faith I wanted to pursue for my family, so I need to ask Seung how he would feel about a Buddhist wedding. His immediate reaction is to balk, saying without even thinking, “We have to have a Catholic mass because that’s what our parents would want.” And that statement is the exact reason why everyone should go to couples’ counseling before getting hitched. Because Seung and I have recently learned in counseling that we must separate our parents’ needs from our own. That is by no means saying we have to ignore our parents’ wants and desires, but rather that they are not conjoined with ours.
When I remind Seung of this he restarts our talk, saying he personally didn’t really have a preconceived idea for the ceremony. I ask Seung how many sacraments he has completed as a Catholic, to which Seung answers, “What’s a sacrament?” and the Catholic option is off the table.
I have completed all the sacraments (milestones that Catholics require to consider someone a practicing member of their faith), but in order to be married in a Catholic church, or even off-site by a Catholic priest, many parishes require completion of these events, including classes and fees for Seung and then another series of classes called “pre-cana” for both of us. I don’t have to get very far into this diatribe when Seung says, “Next option!”
From here, I go digging under our bed to take out Seung’s family photo album (a.k.a. a shoe box) and unearth photos of his grandfather’s funeral. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and now seems a good time to bring the discussion to light. Seung was in middle school when he and his father flew from the United States to Korea for his grandfather’s burial. Seung had been very close to this man, as he and his sister had spent every summer alone with him and their grandmother during elementary school. So later, at his death, Seung also had a part to play.
As I sit with Seung now, I can point out the specific reasons why I have always felt his family is Buddhist. His grandfather’s funeral was a Buddhist ceremony, which all of his relatives clearly knew how to participate in. There are also several other holidays pertaining to honoring deceased relatives that I know his family subscribes to. I understand that once living in America, Seung’s mother frequented a church and that they celebrated Christmas at home—but I believe this was either something Ama found available in her native tongue or something she was embarking on as part of her own Americanization. No matter what the reason, these photos of Seung’s grandfather’s funeral procession, prayers, and burial make me certain that his family will not react in horror if we have Buddhist monks presiding over our union. Seung is coming around to my idea, but he brings up a valid point—that although I follow my own dharma, I don’t attend a temple regularly, either.
So we jointly decide to find a Buddhist temple together—to join as a spiritual community for our family—and to ask five monks to come and bless our marriage. (Three monks perform a Buddhist funeral and four is not a number that sits well for ceremonies—so five would be the ideal number if we can find that many who are willing to travel.) Seung likes all these ideas as long as we can still celebrate Christmas in the “American way” with our family. Which I want also, as well as Easter. I also add that one of my favorite things about attending a mostly Jewish high school was going to friends’ houses for Shabbat. I loved sitting by candlelight and talking with families over dinner, and I tell Seung that I want to borrow this tradition for our family, too—thus birthing our hodgepodge of Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism in our home. Although some might consider this a cultural mess, we also eat Korean and Italian food one-quarter as often as we eat sushi in our house—so I like to think of it as the American way.
Seung then jumps ahead and asks if I imagine the monks presiding over our wedding ceremony or just merely overseeing it with good vibes. I’m hoping for the latter, but this brings up another issue. I know it’s possible to go on the Internet and make anyone a minister. At the wedding Seung and I got together at, the couple had their friend, who was a male dancer in real life, officiate their ceremony. My oldest and dearest friend, Barry, from elementary school, who lives around the corner from me again in L.A., is so smart and empathetic I know he would be terrific at this minister job. Seung has also adopted Barry like his own brother—so much so that they travel around the country once a year to watch each other’s favorite college football teams. So I think Seung would be into this ... but my fear is that some of Seung’s relatives are actual ministers. These cousins are on Seung’s mother’s side and although we don’t see them much, I really like them. If I fear insulting them and I’ve only met them twice, how on earth is Seung going to reconcile having a Jewish lawyer marry two Catholics in a Buddhist wedding ceremony, when three actual religious pundits are in the audience?
“Barry is a great idea!” says Seung.
“But what about your uncles who—”
“Barry is perfect. He knows us both well; he will get the importance of the job, and the levity. And you can write the ceremony with him. Actually, we can all make it together.”
“Okay, but I’m just saying—”
“Done!” says Seung, who is so excited I have no recourse.
I try my last resort. “Don’t you care that your parents won’t understand one word of your wedding ceremony if the whole thing is in English?”
Seung’s immediate answer is no. “Because they’ll understand the Korean wedding ceremony,” he tells me.
The what?
* WE ARE HEADING TO A DINNER WITH SEUNG’S relatives—the usual relatives (who are not usually warm toward me) and some new ones who are visiting from Korea. This visiting uncle of Seung’s is the oldest male of all his father’s brothers, making him and his wife the mac daddies. They and their two grown daughters all speak at least four languages at home. Their daughters are slightly older than Seung and I, and went to prep school with a former president’s children. Both these women earned impressive undergraduate degrees at top American universities and then were recalled right back to Korea, to marry men their family deemed appropriate. All of which is making me want to sing “Baa Baa Black Sheep” because that’s how I think I will be treated over dinner tonight.
Except that no
w I am marrying an eldest son. Which could make things better or worse for me. Maybe I’ll become the Cinderella of this zero-generation interracial wedding story tonight!
I’m also kind of interested in the father of this new branch of Chungs. This uncle had a stroke several years back, and his two highly educated daughters, who now have two children apiece with their appropriate husbands, took care of their father every day of his recovery. Korean culture holds family in the utmost esteem, but I can’t imagine being a working woman, with small children at home, having the means to provide in-home care but instead choosing to drop everything to nurse my father back to health. I find the humility of the act awing. And admirable. As we drive to dinner, Seung is remembering his uncle as wicked smart and always elegant, as well as the best golfer in the family. Seung is actually nervous to see him because he imagines his inability to speak, in the aftermath of the stroke, a tremendous loss. “Like a library burning down,” says my creative fiancé. So as much as I’m dragging my heels, I am also optimistically intrigued.
But I can only half-concentrate on the relatives I’m about to meet because Seung is also telling me about all the things we “will be doing” in our Korean ceremony. Which is something I’ve just learned about tonight. And yet it seems to be a given. A foreign and silent Asian ritual, performed in silk robes before all of our guests, is right up my alley, but the ceremony does not sound like a simple thing. Seung thinks there are, like, twenty rituals that comprise it—over two days—but also thinks we only have to do about five. Five? How long does each one take if twenty take two full days? This is what I want to ask, but it sounds a little pointed, so instead I open with, “What are the five rituals?”
