Chapter Three: How Daegu Can Make Anyone Feel Like a Spinster

On my walk to Debek, a large department store with a decent Western food section where I generally do my grocery shopping, I have to pass what I would call "Wedding Street." Now, it's not that Daegu is full of just wedding shops (though there are significantly more than the photo evidence below as this is just one street in the neighborhood), it's just that it seems every neighborhood or street has a specialty. I've heard of Rice Cake Street, Washing Machine Street, and Watch Street. I have witnessed for myself the glory (or horror, you choose) of Cellphone Alley. Someday, I will document all these strange little niches, but today, I present you with Wedding Street.At first, I thought I could not be so lucky as to find such a cute picture just sitting and waiting for me! I took the picture and left feeling like I must have the best photographic eye in the world. Then a few hours later, in retrospect, I realized I was on Wedding Street. This is most likely a place where brides and grooms pose in their formal wear and take a cute picture riding bikes. Obviously, the bride rides the white one with the bouquet. I guess it's still pretty, even if it is so posed.
It also needs to be noted that plenty more shops could be wedding shops with traditional Korean dress, instead of Western dress, and with names in Korean instead of English.

And this is about a five minute walk.

And what's with all the white people? Wedding ads have way more white people than anything else I've seen so far.

Not just wedding shops, but special honey moon travel agencies!

More white people, why?

In addition to seeing these shops all the time, I also get asked on a near daily basis by my students why I'm not married. I should be-- because I'm so old (I'm 23 here, I apparently got to skip 22). I forget what they call me all the time, but it's a pretty offensive word for unmarried woman of marriageable age.

Or, in other words, spinster. It's not easy to make a 22-year-old feel like a spinster, but man, this city can!

I wonder what wedding diary does.

On a side street, there are a ton of wedding photo places. Often, I get to see brides dressed up taking pictures all around Wedding Street. Hopefully I'll be able to add those to this post later.