BTS is finally returning after three years and nine months. For many fans, the reunion is a celebration. But for some couples, it has become an unexpected complication.
Park Sae-mi (pseudonym) booked her wedding venue last July with the love of her life. Although the couple live near Seoul, they decided to hold their wedding in Busan this June, where groom’s family is based.
The couple chose Saturday, June 13 of this year, envisioning warm early-summer weather, and selected a venue near Busan Asiad Main Stadium. At the time, everything seemed to fall neatly into place.
Then came the unexpected announcement from BTS.
Tens of thousands of fans are expected to descend on the area, and concerns over transportation shortages and traffic congestion have already been raised. Many hotels are also largely fully booked, with the remaining ones seeing sharply higher prices.
“For my family, relatives and friends to attend the wedding, at least one overnight stay would be necessary,” Park told Korea JoongAng Daily.
Busan is a 2.5-hour KTX ride from Seoul where most Park’s guests live, and a 4.5-hour drive by car which can sometimes be much longer depending on the traffic.
“But even hotels located far from the concert venue were nearly impossible to book, and reservations for KTX trains and buses were expected to be just as difficult.”
“If we had gone ahead with the original date, how could we have had the nerve to invite our relatives and friends?” she said. “Telling them to drive from Seoul to Busan and back in one day was simply not an option.”
The venue did not charge an additional fee for the change. Typically, canceling or changing 150 days before a wedding date is eligible for a full refund of the contract fee, but after that, deductions apply: 10 percent before 60 days, 20 to 30 percent before a month and 50 to 70 percent after that.
While she didn’t have any financial fallout, the decision came with other complications for Park.
She had to reschedule every related appointment, from hanbok fittings to visits to the wedding dress shop. More difficult than the logistics, she said, was the emotional strain.
“Until the date was changed, the stress was overwhelming,” Park said. “And throughout the process, it was up to me to contact everyone and sort everything out.”
Her experience is not unique.
In the post, she explained that most of her and her fiance’s friends and colleagues are based in the greater Seoul area, where the couple lives.
The two had planned to arrange a chartered bus for guests, but she is worried about the long journey, with much more crowding and longer travel time now expected with the concertgoing congestion. Also, many of the colleagues and families had previously hoped to turn the wedding into a short trip, but accommodations either sold out or were extremely expensive.
Complicating matters further, she wrote that the wedding venue informed her that canceling or changing the date would result in the loss of 50 percent of the contract fee.
“The financial burden is driving me crazy,” she wrote. “Even if the date can be changed, we would also have to reschedule our honeymoon flights. It’s just one problem after another.”
The post drew 29 comments as of Feb.9. While many users sympathized, others encouraged her to proceed with the original date. A commenter in the post, using the nickname “I want to get married smoothly,” also said they were facing the same problem, but ultimately canceled their venue altogether because it was located adjacent to the Busan Asiad Main Stadium.
“At this point, rather than changing the date, couples are choosing to cancel and move to different venues,” a source at the venue said, adding that one team had paid a cancellation penalty, which amounted to several million won (several thousand dollars).
The venue is still waiting to hear back from other couples who previously inquired about moving their wedding dates. “They need time to discuss it with their families, and pricing is also a factor,” the source said.
The wedding hall manager said that it plans to strengthen traffic and on-site management measures for the other the weddings set to be held on concert days.
A wedding hall near Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul also said it is preparing special measures for weddings set to be held on March 21, the day of BTS’s free performance at the square. No weddings have been canceled or rescheduled so far, the source said, which appears to be due to the concert date approaching so quickly, with less than two months remaining.
