In my story, I have discussed the six rites for royal weddings. However, for everyone else, they only had to go through four:
Euihon (의혼): wedding negotiation and discussion
Napchae (납채): sending formal proposal and setting the date
Nappye (납폐): sending gifts for the bride
Chinyeong (친영): greeting the bride
It was very important that the right suitor was chosen during Euihon because once they entered the second stage (Napchae), both families were already considered in-laws, hence the couple was regarded as married despite the actual wedding ceremony not happening yet. Turning down the proposal at this point in time tantamount to breaking off the promise and was regarded as annulling the marriage itself, or pahon 파혼. The bride-to-be would be considered as a divorcee and not be able to get married to another person.
This would be similar to a bride-to-be whose groom-to-be happened to die in the middle of the four steps: the bride would be considered a widow and never be married to another man.
Three guesses what happens to the man if the situations are reversed. The first two don't count... unless you guessed that nothing happened to him. Then you are absolutely correct.
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Things I Have Learned Today
Non-FictionI love to read and learn new interesting facts about history or the world. Not everything that I discover has any relevancy in my writing. However, I'd hate for these tidbits of trivia to be lost forever. Think of this as an archive of the fascinati...
