Yoon Ja-young is in charge of articles translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times. She is interested in improving the newspaper through AI.
Installing kiosks at weddings
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By Yoon Ja-young
Recently, kiosks installed at weddings have been making headlines. These kiosks, similar to the ones we see at restaurants and cinemas, are now being used at weddings.
What are those kiosks for at weddings? For wedding gift money.
An ordinary wedding in Korea would look like this. Once arriving at the wedding venue, the guest will see two desks — one for the guests of the bride and the other for the guests of the groom.
The guest will approach one of the two desks. (There could be cases when the guest is a friend of both the bride and groom, but that is an exceptional case.)
The desk is manned by trusted relatives or friends of the bride or groom. They will guide the guest to sign a guestbook. Then, the guest will submit a cash envelope with their name on it. After the envelope is taken, the guest will be asked how many meal tickets they want. After receiving meal and parking tickets the guest will go to the bride and groom to congratulate them.
What would it be like with the new kiosk system?
Arriving at the wedding venue, the guest will approach the kiosk. Then on the screen, they choose between "congratulating bride" or "congratulating groom."
Then they enter their relationship to the bride or groom and their name. Then they deposit cash into the machine.
Now it's time to get the meal tickets. Select the number and type of meal tickets — for adults or kids — and click for parking tickets, too, if you brought your car. The kiosk will automatically issue the meal and parking tickets.
After the wedding, the money collected via kiosk is delivered to the bride and groom, with an Excel file detailing the names of the guests, how much they paid and how many tickets they got.
For instance, the Excel file will show that Kim, a high school friend of the groom, paid 150,000 won at 10:20 a.m. through the kiosk, and got three meal tickets for adults. Ahn, a work colleague of the bride, paid 100,000 won at 10:40 a.m., and got two meal tickets for adults and two for kids.
In this way, the Excel file also shows the total number of guests who gave gift money as well as the total sum of the money collected through the kiosk, and the total number of meal tickets and parking tickets issued. There is no need to manually count and verify everything, and all this convenience comes by paying around 200,000 won to the kiosk rental company which says its service is already fully booked for the busy September-October wedding season.
The kiosk rental companies promote several advantages of this system. First of all, it eliminates the need for the relatives to be at the desk managing the gift money. All family members can just watch the precious moments of the wedding, from the beginning to the end. It can also prevent theft or fraud at the crowded wedding venue. There have been reports of some people getting meal tickets after submitting empty envelopes but this can't happen with the kiosk.
The kiosk companies also claim that even older guests have no problem using them as the machines are at coffee shops and restaurants everywhere these days. If the bride and groom are still concerned about guests who might not be familiar with the machine, they can pay for the additional option of its staffer being dispatched for assistance at the kiosk.
Reactions to this new service vary widely. It seems that among young brides and grooms, there are quite a few who view this service positively. They like it that it addresses issues such as not having relatives to manage the wedding gift desk or having to ask them — who are also guests to the wedding — to work at the wedding. A bride who is positive about the service recollects that she had trouble reconciling the amounts of condolence money they received with the amounts recorded in their ledgers after her grandfather's funeral. They say we should embrace the world changing to be more convenient. "Initially, it was strange to include bank account numbers on wedding invitations, but hasn't it become commonplace now?" they ask.
However, there are also significant negative reactions. Some feel it focuses only on convenience and money, making weddings feel more like business transactions. They say it is disrespectful to receive guests' heartfelt gifts by machine. "Why don't they let the guest watch their wedding streamed online instead? They can save money as they wouldn't have to rent a large venue."
The calculation of wedding gift money is complex in Korea. The amount is determined based on various factors such as how close the guest is to the couple, how much the guest got from the couple on previous occasions and the price of the meal provided, among other considerations. The debate on whether to install kiosks has added another layer of complexity to wedding planning for the younger generation.
The writer is finance editor of The Korea Times.