Cost Of Getting Married In Korea

Korea's largest wedding consulting, DUOWED, has recently released 'Marriage Cost Report 2020'. The average cost was reported to be around ￦150 million. The subjects were 1,000 people (488 male, and 512 female) who have married over the last two years.

￦153,330,000 spent on wedding consists of costs listed below.

• Housing ￦180 million
• Wedding ceremony: ￦10.1 million
• Wedding package (wedding photo, dress, makeup) ￦2.35 million
• Jewelry: ￦2.94 million
• Wedding presents (furniture, utensils): ￦12.62 million
• Gifts after wedding: ￦960,000
• Home appliances: ￦12.3 million
• Honeymoon: ￦4.3 million

The cost was distributed to the groom and bride by 7:3 (27.2%), 6:4 (27.2), and 5:5 (21.6%), respectively.

The cost of housing accounts for 70.4% of the total cost of getting married. Housing cost has steadily increased from 69.9% in 2016, 70.8% in 2017, 72.7% in 2018, and peaked in 2019 by 73.5%.

The most popular type of housing was apartment building (40.1%) followed by villa (24.3%), and officetel (18.7%). Compared to 2019, the ratio of apartments fell by 24% while villas and officetel rose by 5.4% and 16.1%, respectively.

More than 50% of the couples got their home with "jeonse" (renting a house by paying a high deposit, 59.3%), and only 5.1% of couples bought their houses. The rate of buying a house was 28.8% in 2019, but the number dropped sharply in 2020.

Besides jeonse, "ban-jeonse"(renting a house by paying a high deposit+monthly rent) was 20.2%, and "wolse" (paying only monthly rent) was 13.2%.

The cost of getting married, excluding housing, cost about ￦45.32 million, which are:

• Wedding costs (wedding hall, wedding package): ￦12.46 million
• Presents, meals, housewares, honeymoon: ￦32.8 million

When asked about the possibility of getting married with parental financial support, 57.6% answered "very likely", 28.6% chose "possible", and 13.8% answered, "not likely" and "impossible".

According to the same report, 72.1% of newlyweds preferred a small wedding, to reduce cost (32.2%), to hold a private wedding with family (22.3%), or because they didn't like complex rituals (20.8%).

The proportion of housing is significantly high, but the ratio is dropping, which is positive news for those couples in Korea. However, the possibility of buying a house is very low, because of the extremely expensive houses.

Not just the cost, but the burdens of marriage are decreasing as well. More young people are choosing not to marry, and not to have children. Government is trying hard to find a solution, but wasn't very successful.

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