You're listening to bonus episode number 76 of the Culips English Podcast. My name is Andrew and I'll be your host and your English study buddy for this episode. Thank you for pressing play and joining me for this English study session. Now, first things first, I started last week's episode by saying, "Welcome, welcome, welcome."

And I asked you a question. And the question was, who am I copying? Who is the famous podcaster who starts many of his episodes with that phrase? "Welcome, welcome, welcome." And in our Discord community over the last week, there were some guesses. But so far, I haven't seen anyone who guessed correctly. So I guess that was a pretty difficult question.

Well, let me share the answer with you now. That catchphrase is Dax Shepard's, and he hosts the podcast, Armchair Expert. It's a really popular podcast, I have to be honest and say that I don't listen religiously to it, but it's pretty interesting from time to time. And I'm just looking at the website for the podcast now.

And on the website Armchair Expert is described as a "podcast that celebrates the messiness of being human." I'll put the link to Armchair Expert in the description for this episode. So if you are curious, you can check it out. And you can let me know if I have a good Dax Shepard impersonation or not.

Anyways, in this week's episode, everyone, what I want to do is share a story with you about a wedding that I attended recently. It was a lot of fun, and a pretty interesting experience. So, I'll share all the details with you of that story in just a moment. But before I do, I want to let you know that there's a free interactive transcript for this episode, you can get it on our website, Culips.com.

Or you can just follow the link that's in the description for this episode. And in addition to the transcript, I've also created a glossary that will give away for free as well, and also a comprehension quiz. Now the comprehension quiz, I'm only going to share with our Culips members just as a way to say thank you to all of our awesome members who support what we do here at Culips.

So if you're a Culips member, well, then you can find the quiz in our member-only channel that's on our Discord server. So Culips members, make sure to do the quiz after you finish listening to this episode. And if you're not a Culips member yet, but you want to be, well, then you can join just by following the link in the description, or by visiting our website Culips.com.

And I recommend Culips membership to anyone who's serious about improving their English fluency. When you're a Culips member, you'll get full transcripts and study guides for all of our regular episodes, plus so much more.

Such as ad-free audio, our members-only series, the Fluency Files, our members-only Discord channel, an invitation to our monthly member-only live streams where you can hang out with me and some of the other Culips staff directly and ask us questions or interact with us, plus so much more. There are a lot of benefits that you get when you're a Culips member.

So if you're interested, and you want to take your English to the next level with us, then sign up today. One final note before I jump into the story, and that is that I asked you guys last week, whether you'd like to have a built-in vocabulary lesson within the bonus episode, or if you'd prefer a glossary. And the feedback was interesting.

I was reading through all of your comments on our Discord last week. And it seemed like many people actually preferred a glossary. So, I think going forward, I'm going to do the vocabulary lesson from time to time when my schedule allows, I'll just throw that at the end of the episode. But going forward in every episode, I'll include a glossary.

So, it will really just depend on my workload. You know, these are bonus episodes and they're meant just to be something that I produce without spending too much time and too much effort. So when my schedule allows, I'll include a vocabulary lesson in the episode.

And when I'm rather busy, and I just can't squeeze it in, well, then you'll have to just rely on the glossary, but I think that will be helpful anyways. So, I think that's all the chitchat and announcements I have here at the top of the episode. And now it's time to get to the story that I want to share with you all, which is about going to a wedding that I attended a couple of weeks ago.

So, I hope you enjoy it. Let's get started with the story now. Here we go.

The story that I want to tell you this week is about attending a wedding. Yes, that's right. This week we have a wedding story. So recently, one of my friends got married, and her wedding was really unique and unlike any other wedding that I've ever been to in Korea, so I thought it would make for an interesting story to tell you all today.

So, let's start at the very beginning, and I guess I should introduce my friend to you, and I don't want to doxx my friend. Have you heard that expression before, "To doxx someone?" Doxx is spelled D-O-X-X, and to be frank, I don't really know the origin of this word.

I don't know where it comes from, but what it means is to reveal somebody's identity so that they are public, and so I'm going to try and protect my friend's privacy here. You know I always feel a little bit uncomfortable about talking about my friends because, yeah, I just want to respect my friends' privacy. So, I'll give my friend a nickname for this episode, so why don't we call her Daisy?

OK, we'll call my friend Daisy. So, my friend Daisy and I, we met for the first time during my first year in Korea, which was way back in 2009, I believe. So, although I haven't lived in Korea consecutively since then, I did a lot of coming and going back and forth, and I was in Korea on and off. I did meet her way back then, way back in the day in 2009, so I guess we've known each other for about 14 years, then if my math is correct.

And the way that I met Daisy for the first time is actually she was dating a Canadian friend of mine, and when I first moved from Canada to Korea, a lot of the first friends that I met in Korea were actually other foreigners, other English teachers. It was a little difficult to make really strong Korean friendships at that time because I didn't really know any Korean, and that put me at a big handicap with becoming close with Korean people.

So, naturally I just befriended other English teachers in the city that I was living in, and one of these other English teachers was a Canadian guy, and he happened to be dating Daisy at that time. So that's how I met her way back in the day around 14 years ago. And since that time when we first met, we've been more or less in touch with each other depending on our life situation.

As I mentioned, I did a lot of coming and going, and she did a lot of traveling and coming and going herself, but we've known each other for years and years, and even when I was living in Canada, she was traveling through Canada at that time, and she came and visited me when I was living in Montreal.

She stayed with me in Montreal, and she attended my wedding when I got married a few years ago as well. So, although we haven't been like tight, tight, tight friends, we have kept in touch throughout this whole time. And like many relationships that people have when they're in their early 20s because when I first met Daisy, we were both in, I guess she was in her early 20s, and I was around my mid 20s.

Obviously, those relationships sometimes don't work out, and it didn't work out with my Canadian friend that she was dating at that time, but that's OK because things turned out for the best I believe for Daisy. And about a year ago, she started seeing a new guy, and they started dating about, yeah, I would say around a year and a half ago or so.

And after she met him and she started dating him for a little while, she sent me a message and said, "Oh, I met this new guy, and things are going really well." And then after a few months, randomly out of the blue, I got a text, and it was from Daisy, and she said, "Oh, I'm here with my boyfriend. We're in your neighborhood attending the spring festival that's happening."

So, I guess at that time there was a spring festival happening in my neighborhood, and there was food and drinks and, yeah, kind of cool festival in my neighborhood. And at that time, I was actually super, super busy preparing for my move.

It was like I think a week or two before I had to move from my old apartment to my new house, and my wife and I were really busy, so we couldn't go and hang out and join them at the festival, but Daisy lives on the other side of Seoul than I live. So, it's not very often that we're in the same place at the same time.

Seoul is this huge mega city, and it can take a long time to go from one end of the city to the other end of the city. Sometimes it feels like it's almost another country for me, the other side of the city. So, when I got this text message, and she said that I'm here with my new boyfriend, and we're in your neighborhood, even though I couldn't hang out for the whole day and attend the festival with them, I did want to go out and say hello and meet the new guy.

So, I remember at that time, I ran out and went over to the festival that was just a couple of blocks away from my apartment, and I got to say hello and meet the new boyfriend, and my first impression of him was really good. When I met him, I thought, oh, he's just a great guy, he seemed really positive and kind, and I thought they seemed like a wonderful match.

And the cherry on top was that the boyfriend was wearing a t-shirt that said Vancouver, Canada, on it, and I don't think that was on purpose. I don't think he wore that shirt because he thought he was going to meet me, and he knew that I was Canadian, it was just like random. But I thought, this is a good guy, he's got a Vancouver t-shirt on.

And yeah, for those of you who don't know, I grew up in Canada, very close to Vancouver, and I've spent a lot of time there, my favorite hockey team is the Vancouver Canucks. And so I just thought, yeah, this guy's cool. And I also thought, like in my head, I made a prediction, I thought, I think these two are gonna get married, they just seem to have a good vibe, a good fit, a good match.

And yeah, I kind of thought in the back of my mind, and I think I maybe even mentioned to my wife at that time, I think they're gonna get married. And it turns out that my prediction was totally correct, OK? So, when I met the boyfriend, and I saw Daisy there for the first time, that was like I said, just a couple of weeks before I had to move, so I'm gonna say it would have been like the last week of May or the first week of June, sometime in the late spring.

And by the end of the summer, well, the romance had bloomed, the relationship had developed to the point where they were engaged. So, in early September, I got a message from Daisy, and it said, "We're engaged, we're getting married, and the wedding is next month."

So, I got the message from Daisy in September that they were engaged, and the wedding was happening at the end of October. So, a very, very short engagement and a very, very quick wedding. Now, in English, we actually have a term for this.

Do you know what this is called, this very short engagement? We call it "a shotgun wedding." A shotgun wedding. Now, to be honest with you, this isn't really a shotgun wedding because usually when we use this term "shotgun wedding" to describe a wedding, it's because of a pregnancy and wanting to get married really quickly to kind of make the wedding and the relationship as legitimate as possible before the baby comes.

That kind of situation is a shotgun wedding. But technically, we can also use it to describe a very short engagement, so kind of a shotgun wedding. I don't think there's any pregnancy involved in this one at all, but nonetheless, a short engagement.

So, my friend Daisy was really, really busy. You could imagine trying to plan and get a wedding organized in just a month and a half, essentially is all the time that she had. So, the happy engaged couple or busy planning and organizing the wedding, and one of the things that's tradition here in Korea to do when you get married is to personally meet all of your guests and hand them an invitation to the wedding.

Now, you don't have to do this with all of your guests, but definitely your close friends and people that you really care about, you want to meet them directly to give them an invitation to your wedding. And usually, at that time, you also treat them to a meal. And my wife and I did this when we got married, so I know about how difficult this is. It seems kind of easy, right?

Just like hang out with your friends and have a meal and give them a wedding invitation. But when you have to do this with many people, it can be exhausting, it can be tiring, and it can also be a little bit expensive, to be honest. You have to buy meals for all of your friends, which, yeah, if it's just a few friends, is OK, but when you have a large social circle, it makes it difficult.

So, I could just imagine how busy Daisy was and how stressful it was for her to try and meet all of her friends in this short amount of time to hand them the wedding invitation. So, because of this, instead of meeting like one-on-one with Daisy for a lunch, we decided to like meet up with our greater social circle so that it would be easier for her.

So, we planned a little afternoon get-together one Sunday afternoon, and I was there, and some of our other friends were there, and Daisy was there, and also her fiancé was there. And we met up for brunch, we had a nice meal together, and then we ended up going to one of our other friends’ houses, and we played Nintendo Switch all afternoon.

All of us had this Nintendo party, and it was really fun, it was a blast. And I don't want to share any of the details about that afternoon with you because I'll be spoiling an upcoming Simplified Speech episode if I do. Quick aside here and Culips update for you: I did meet up with Kassy this week, and we recorded a Simplified Speech episode all about Nintendo.

It's kind of funny, Kassy's been playing Nintendo recently, I had this experience of playing Nintendo recently, so we thought it would make for a great Simplified Speech episode. So, I just recorded that on Tuesday last week, and as soon as we get that episode prepared and the study guide written and the transcript made, all of those things that we have to do to get the episode ready for release, well, then we will release it.

So, if you're a Nintendo fan like I am and like Kassy is, then you're going to want to keep your eyes and ears open for this episode. OK, anyway, aside finished, let's get back to the story. So, I met up with Daisy, we had a nice afternoon together with some of our other friends, we ate brunch, and I got the wedding invitation. And then a few weeks later, it was time for the wedding.

And as I mentioned at the top of the episode, the wedding was really unique, and I've never attended a wedding in Korea like it before. Now, the wedding venue was outside of Seoul, about two hours outside of Seoul in the neighboring province, which is called Gangwondo. And the venue itself was a surprise to me when I first heard it, I had to do a double-take.

I was like, "What, you're getting married there?" Because the place that she got married was a beer brewery, a beer brewery, OK? A place where beer is made, but actually, it was more like a craft brewery. So, you can erase the image of a big factory out of your mind, no, this was like a nice craft brewery.

It had a place, obviously, where beer was made, but it also had this big open courtyard that was really nice with fabulous seating and a great place to actually do the wedding ceremony. And then it had a nice restaurant as well attached to it, and it was in the mountains with beautiful scenery, a really isolated location. So, it ended up being a really nice venue to have the wedding in.

But, like I said, it was a couple of hours outside of Seoul, and many people who live in Seoul actually don't have a car because the public transportation in Seoul is so great. There's amazing public transportation in the city: the buses, the subway, everything works really well. And so it's so easy to get around in Seoul itself.

But when you need to go outside of Seoul to a location like this, well, then if you don't have a car, you're kind of out of luck. And so because so many of the wedding guests were in a situation similar to mine, where they just use public transportation and they don't have a car, well, then Daisy organized a shuttle bus for us so that we could all ride in the shuttle bus together to the wedding venue.

So perfect, I planned to take the shuttle bus to the wedding. This was one of the, I think, stressful things for Daisy about the whole wedding itself was the shuttle bus situation because actually, there was a little bit of a disaster with the shuttle buses. There were two shuttle buses that were departing from Seoul.

And as I mentioned earlier, Seoul is this huge city, and so one was leaving from the southern part of Seoul, and one was leaving from the northern part of Seoul, and they were both going to the wedding venue, and you just had to take the shuttle bus based on where you live in the city. I happened to live in the northern part of Seoul, so I took that northern Seoul shuttle bus.

Now, when I got to the pickup zone where the shuttle bus was going to meet us, I met up with some of my other friends who were going to the wedding, and I arrived about 10 minutes early, so it was perfect. And you know, there were a bunch of people there, maybe 30 or 40 people there who were all attending the wedding, and we were just kind of hanging out and chatting.

And after 10 or 15 minutes, we looked at our watch and we were like, "Huh, the shuttle bus should have been here like five minutes ago or so. I wonder where it is?" You know, usually when you hire a bus like this, they arrive early, not late, right? So that was a little bit surprising, but whatever, it's only five minutes.

So, we were just still hanging out, and more and more people were coming to ride the bus. And 10 minutes went by, 20 minutes went by, and then we were like, "Wow, this is pretty weird." So, one of the other wedding guests phoned Daisy and got the number for the shuttle bus company and was able to phone the bus driver directly to see what was happening.

And the bus driver got the time wrong, he thought that he was supposed to be there an hour later than he actually was. So you can imagine we were all like, "Oh my God, what's going on?" We were all just waiting on the sidewalk on a busy Seoul street waiting for this bus, but the bus driver got the time wrong, so he was kind of flustered.

He was like, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry." He promised that he would get moving right away and that he would be able to pick us up within 30 minutes or so. And by the time all things were said and done, and the shuttle bus finally arrived, we hit the road about an hour late. To be honest with you, that was fine by me, I wasn't really in a rush or anything like that.

And it was kind of cool to hang out and chat with some of the other wedding guests as we waited for the shuttle bus to arrive, but it was a bit of a dramatic situation, as you could imagine. And what made the drama even more intense was once we actually did hit the road and were going to the wedding, then we got stuck in traffic.

So, we were stressed out that we might miss the wedding, but thankfully we arrived right in the nick of time, just about 15 minutes before the wedding ceremony was scheduled to start. And it turns out I was lucky that I took the shuttle bus from the north part of Seoul because the shuttle bus that departed from the southern part of Seoul actually broke down en route to the wedding, and some of those guests had to take a taxi all the way to the wedding venue.

So, yeah, some disaster with the shuttle buses, unfortunately. But thankfully, that was the only part of the wedding that had some problems because the rest of the wedding went off without a hitch. Now, you may be wondering why the wedding was happening at this microbrewery, craft brewery location, and that's because my friend Daisy is involved in the beer industry, and she's got a lot of connections to that industry.

And so that's why it happened there. And I believe her friends are actually owners of this venue, and they graciously offered to host the wedding at their location. So, that's why it happened there. But also, many of the guests were somehow connected to the beer industry as well, working in the industry as brewers or bar owners or beer merchants.

So, I ended up meeting a lot of beer people at the wedding, beer experts. So, that was kind of cool and a little bit different than the people that I usually interact with because I hang out with a lot of teachers or people from the education field, right, due to my line of work. But this was totally different, a totally different industry.

So, that's always fun to get to mix it up with people who have a different lifestyle than you do. So, the wedding itself, like I said, was beautiful. The weather that day was amazing, really, you couldn't ask for better weather in late October. It was just gorgeous. And the venue was in the mountains, and all of the leaves on the trees in the forests were these beautiful shades of orange, and yellow, and red.

You know, the fall colors were really out, so gorgeous. Also, the temperature was really warm that day, it was 20 degrees, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. So, just amazing weather and perfect for an outdoor wedding. Really, it was the complete opposite of my outdoor wedding. When I got married, it totally poured rain.

But thankfully, when Daisy got married, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was just a gorgeous wedding. And after the wedding ceremony was completed, then it was time to party and time to eat. So usually at a Korean wedding, you know, they happen at a wedding hall, and this is where I would say like 90 to 95 percent of Korean weddings happen, is at a wedding hall.

And the wedding ceremonies themselves are usually pretty short, like 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at maximum. And then after the wedding is complete, you go down usually to the basement of the wedding hall, and in the wedding hall, there will be several rooms where weddings take place themselves . And then you go down to the basement, and there's a buffet restaurant.

And all of the people from all of the different weddings are there, mixing it up, eating at the buffet. And usually, it's not a very social event, you know, usually, you just eat with the people that you came to the wedding with, and you eat at the buffet, and then you go home. That's it.

So many times when you go to a wedding here in Korea, you're kind of in and out in like an hour and a half or two hours max. It's usually a pretty quick thing, like the wedding will start at 11:30, and you're out the door by one, for example. But as I said, this wedding was completely different. So after the wedding ceremony itself finished, well, like I said, it was party time and time to eat.

And the restaurant at this brewery serves American-style southern barbecue, so that's what the menu was. We had barbecue ribs and barbecue brisket, which is a completely uncharacteristic meal, very not traditional Korean food at all. But I really enjoyed it. I don't eat that kind of food very often, American barbecue. It's not too easy to find restaurants that serve the style of food here in Korea.

So I was really surprised that that's what the menu was, but it was a happy surprise, a pleasant surprise, and I really enjoyed the meal. And then after the meal, because we were at this brewery, well, then it was time to drink some beer. And the way that Daisy and her husband, now her husband, wanted to have the wedding take place was they just wanted people to hang out and drink beer and socialize.

And so it was really similar to a western-style wedding reception. In Canada and in America and many other western wedding traditions, after the wedding ceremony, then there's usually a party, which we call the reception. And at the reception, there's, you know, drinking and dancing and just like a really celebratory party atmosphere.

Now, unfortunately, there wasn't any dancing at Daisy's wedding, but there was a lot of socializing and hanging out. And in the courtyard of the venue, there was this big outdoor fireplace, and they lit a nice fire and put all of these outdoor lounge chairs around the fire. So it was cool, all of the guests just hung out, and we drank beer, and we sat around the fire and talked.

And there was great music playing, and like I said, the weather was beautiful, so you could just look up at the blue sky and all of the beautiful leaves on the trees. And so it was just a really nice way to chill and spend an afternoon. I was also happy because for the first time since I got married, I was able to wear my wedding suit again. When I got married, I had a custom suit made.

And recently, I've been complaining to my wife that I haven't been able to wear my wedding suit. Like, we got this expensive suit custom made for me, it fits perfectly, it looks great, but I haven't had any opportunities to wear it. Well, Daisy's wedding proved to be the perfect opportunity. And since I hadn't even tried on the suit in over two years, I was a little bit worried, like what happens if I've gained too much weight and it doesn't fit anymore?

But thankfully, the suit fit perfectly still. In fact, it might have even been a little bit loose. I guess it helps that I had to wear the suit right after completing my marathon, so I've been doing a lot of running and training recently, and I'm sure that helped me to be able to fit into my suit still. So I got to wear my wedding suit, and in fact, I think I was quite overdressed.

I think I was one of the only wedding guests wearing a suit. But I was happy that I could wear the suit because otherwise, you know, it's just a waste. You get this custom suit made for your wedding, and then it just sits in your closet. And I guess it's like a nice reminder of the wedding, but I'm more practical like that. I like to use it, I like to wear it.

So thankfully, I had the chance to wear that suit at the wedding. And yeah, we just sat outside, like I said, hanging out, drinking some beer, and I got to meet some really interesting people because we were all just sort of hanging out around the fire. And also, we were drinking beer. And in English, we say that alcohol can act as a social lubricant.

That's what we call it, a social lubricant, which essentially just means that maybe some people who are maybe more naturally shy can feel less shy and more outgoing and more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger.

I think maybe, in general, and this is just my opinion, this is not fact, just from my life experience, in general, Korean people seem to be a little more shy and less outgoing than Western people, and especially when talking with foreigners. And I'm a foreigner, right? So usually people are a little bit more shy and reserved to talk with me.

But actually, I did meet a lot of new and really interesting people, as I said earlier. So that was a really fun experience and something that I enjoyed about the wedding ceremony. Anyways, as the afternoon went on and turned to the evening, it was time to head back to Seoul. Of course, we were a couple of hours outside of Seoul, so we had a long journey ahead of us.

And luckily, I was able to get a ride back to Seoul with a friend of a friend who drove to the wedding instead of taking the shuttle bus. So that was perfect. And the driver turned out to be a really cool guy. I really enjoyed meeting him and chatting with him. He owns and operates his own LP bar in Seoul.

And we don't really have these kinds of places in Canada, I don't know about your country, but an LP bar is like a really small bar, maybe holds enough seats for 15 or 20 people maximum, and they have lots of vinyl LP records and a really amazing high-fi stereo system.

And it's a place where you go to have a drink and to listen to music, and you can usually request what song you want to listen to, and the bartender will play it for you. So, this is what an LP bar is, and the driver of the car that I got a ride in going back to Seoul was an owner of an LP bar. So, as you can imagine, he is a big music guy, and I'm a big music guy, so we had a lot to talk about.

And so it was cool to meet him and ride back with him. And we had some other friends in the car as well, and so there were five of us total, I believe, in the car. And on the way back to Seoul, we stopped at one of the local countryside restaurants that was in the area. And in my opinion, these are the most delicious restaurants in the country, the ones that you can find in the countryside.

They're usually family-owned and operated and usually have been in business for like 30 years or 50 years or maybe even longer than that. And so we decided to stop and get dinner, and we ate some duck soup, I guess is the best way to translate the food that we had from Korean into English – duck soup. And it was a great meal, totally delicious, just as I expected from a countryside restaurant.

So, once we were full, we had filled up our bellies, it was time to get back in the car and drive back to Seoul. And once we got into Seoul, one of the main highways in Seoul actually runs beside the Han River, and the Han River is the big river that goes through the middle of the city and it divides the city into its northern region and its southern region.

And as we were driving into Seoul and we're on that highway beside the Han River, then there were fireworks exploding in the sky. I guess there was some kind of festival or event happening in the Han River park, and so there were these beautiful fireworks exploding in the sky.

And it was just a perfect way to end the day, looking at the fireworks exploding in the sky and the amazing view of Seoul at night with all of its lights and skyscrapers. So, all in all, it was just the perfect way to end the night and also a great way to celebrate my friend's new marriage.

So that brings us to the end of another bonus episode everyone. How did you enjoy that story? Would you like attending that kind of wedding? Let me know what you thought about this episode by leaving a comment on our Discord server, you can join our Discord server for free. And if you're a Culips member, then you'll also get access to the member-only channel.

The link to join our Discord is in the description for this episode. So come on over and hang out with the over 3000 other English learners from around the world who are practicing and improving their English together on our Discord server. So, everyone actually it's dinnertime here for me now. And I'm going to try making a homemade pizza for the first time in a very, very long time.

So, I'm excited about that. So, wish me good luck. It's pizza night here in my household and I'm going to try and make the most delicious pizza I can. I'll let you know how that goes next week. Anyways, that is it for me for now. So have an awesome week ahead. Please take care, happy English studies as always, and I will speak to you next time. Bye bye!