American wedding is a wedding that can be personalized for taste of bride & groom as much as possible. I guess it's one of world's most personalized wedding.
First question and the most common question you hear from wedding vendors is 'what is your favorite color?' What does it matter? I can tell what style I want, but not the color. Most vendors I met for my wedding asked me the same question when we met first. It was something I wasn't prepared. I don't even have favorite color, and I don't think the color fits the wedding even if I had one.
Just with that question, it tells so much about the wedding in the U.S.. It's about designing your dream wedding - not just picking whatever available at wedding shop or wedding chapel and make the wedding as similar as possible to other people's wedding. In fact, the weddings in Korea are pretty similar to each other. Also, people don't care much about how every single is executed. They don't take them as personal expression or bride/groom's taste. It's because wedding industry is not as big as one in the U.S., and it's not as sophisticated as here either. Plus, in Korean wedding, Koreans spend much more money on getting house to live, gifts to family members, and getting new household stuffs. Groom's parents usually buys a house to live for the couple, and bride's parents buy household stuffs - things to fill the house. Then, each side pays the half of the wedding, or some family pays all by themselves.
Because of that, it is hard to pay attention to every single detail on wedding ceremony and reception, and people don't expect much from those either. These days, luxurious wedding or small family oriented wedding is getting popular, and with that, American style wedding - showing all the fine touch everywhere throughout the wedding. Despite that, it's still early stage to find all the great selection of invitation, wedding shoes, escort cards . . . etc. ready at reasonable price.
For me, never been to American wedding, it was hard to prepare all the details of my wedding here in America. Finding out what's common, and what's not was the most difficult thing for me. Now, I know at least what it should look like, and after all the hassle, I really enjoyed searching for the exact one I've been looking for - reception venue, dress, favor, flower. . . etc.
Indeed, this is America - the land each individual is treated well as individual - not as a group, and it is obviously well shown in the wedding, too. In Korea, people will do it because it's most popular, here, it's more of ' I do it because it reflects me.'
