KOREAN TRADITIONAL WEDDING DRESS

Chanchal Bharti, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

Who loves weddings? Nope! I should instead ask, who doesn’t love wedding dresses?

Have you ever wanted to photograph yourself dressed in a traditional Korean wedding, Hanbok? I know we all adore the fashionable outfits of the bride and groom, but today we will talk about a new wedding dress; a traditional Korean wedding dress. It’s neither as basic as a bridal gown nor as complex as an ancient king and queen’s gown. So, how do Koreans dress?

The Beauty of Hanbok

People of South Korea wear Hanbok, which is a traditional Korean dress (a long high-waisted skirt with a top that comes in different colours and a Hanbok jacket). Hanboks can be traced back to the Three Kingdoms Period (57BC–668AD) in Korean history. The Hanbok style now is similar to that of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910. I love Korean wedding dresses, not because I love K-dramas and K-pop. Korean dresses appeal to me because of their distinct and attractive structure. While a standard Hanbok has a few layers, the traditional Korean wedding Hanbok is bound with layers. 

Both the bride and the groom are dressed in Hanboks, but it is not an average Hanbok; they are designed specially for weddings. The bride and groom wear different colours of Hanbok during their wedding ceremony, such as pink, red, white, or purple. Most Korean brides like to wear red skirts, which are associated with prosperity. They also wear Jokduri, which is a type of headwear. The Wonsam or Hwarot, a ceremonial jacket that was worn by Joseon dynasty queens and upper-class women, are next. The Wonsam is bright and ornate, with red silk on the outside and blue silk on the inside, as well as flowers stitched in the fabric to symbolise riches.

Apart from their dresses, if we talk about the brides’ makeup, they have a distinctive feature as well; they have red spots on their cheeks, known as Yeonji. Koreans think that red protects them from evil; hence, they have red dots on their cheeks. It’s not as if Koreans only wear Hanbok at weddings, they can wear Hanbok at any formal event. The Wedding Hanbok, however, has more colours than the regular Hanbok.

What makes a Korean wedding interesting is the beauty of the Hanbok and the exquisite makeup. Isn’t it interesting to imagine yourself wearing a traditional Hanbok and feeling the essence of a Korean Wedding?