Two Wives at One Wedding

Part of the wedding package which was arranged included a DVD and video of the day's events - including digital photos of the wedding, plus an album of photographs which included the shots from the photo-shoot several weeks earlier. The wedding hall company told us it would be four to six weeks before this would be ready to collect, but this eventually turned into ten before it was finally ready.

Because the albums promised to be large and heavy affairs, one of our friends offered to give us a lift to the wedding hall. When we got there, the DVD had my name on it, but instead of my wife's, there was another woman's name, who I don't recall marrying. Presumably the content was correct, although it did make me wonder whether they'd put my photographs and the other woman's on the disc. So we (by which I mean my wife accompanied by my usual oblivious look) complained, but aside from apologising the staff maintained an oblivious look of their own which told you that they weren't going to do anything about it. I suggested that perhaps it was merely the title on the DVD cover, rather than captions in the on-screen video, so we could take it home and check.

However, back in the car our friend, the same one who'd fought back in Paris Baguette, was outraged to hear of the bad service, and grabbed the DVD before storming off towards the office, while we bravely hid in the back of the car. Five minutes later she was back with the promise that everything would be put right. You can use your imagination as to what happened in those five minutes and most of it would probably be true.

What nothing can be done about is the album itself, which turned out to be unintentionally funny in a Korean way. The photographs themselves were well done, but presumably in order to add to the mood, it was littered with romantic English verses and phrases - or rather, what someone had taken to be romantic phrases. In fact, the phrases actually appeared to be lifted straight out of various songs which may have mentioned the word 'love' but not in the context the commissioning Korean believed, hence - in beautiful calligraphy - "I'll love you baby, yeah, until I don't". I also liked, "I'll be with you forever, darning" - although I'd probably have appreciated that more had I been American; the colloquial "darn" isn't a word used in England. Presumably that was merely a typo or Freudian slip.

It's a bit perplexing as to why we can experience excellent customer service in Korea for the smallest things, but when it comes to something as significant and expensive as wedding packages, the after sales service is appalling. You might logically assume that they'd be thinking that you aren't going to be using their services again but it's not as simple as that. Aside from the dreaded social network badmouthing that goes on, my Korean Family still have their son to marry - which the Wedding Hall company knows. Anyway, we certainly won't get married there again.