Are Quiet Weddings In Now?
Byun Yo-han and Tiffany Young kept their ceremony to family. In the U.S., the median wedding cost $24,000 for about 117 guests. A Korean hall can still make a couple pay for more than 200.
On September 29, Yoo Jae-suk asked Byun Yo-han why he had not been invited. Byun said he and Tiffany Young had held a small ceremony with family, though Yoo had texted ahead to ask for a seat.
They registered the marriage in February. Yoo said secret weddings have been the pattern in Korean entertainment since Kim Jong-kook, and that plenty of couples now stop at relatives.
Family was the whole guest list. Across U.S. weddings last year, the average was still about 117 people.
A family ceremony is a real choice on Korean television right now. The U.S. median wedding in 2025 was $24,000, with about 117 guests. Venice was priced in the tens of millions, for a room not much bigger than a Korean hall minimum.
What they actually held
Kim Jong-kook married on September 5, 2025, at a hotel in Gangnam. The Korea Times count, reported by the Straits Times, was about 100 people: family, relatives, and close friends. Yoo hosted that wedding.
Byun described his own list as family only. Yoo had asked to come, and the couple left him off it.
What a typical bill is
The Knot's 2026 Real Weddings Study asked 10,474 U.S. couples who married in 2025. The average cost was $34,000. The median, the point where half of couples spent less, was $24,000.
Guest count averaged 117, against 131 in 2019.
Couples who spent under $12,000 had about 92 guests, in places like a park or a family home. Couples over $41,000 averaged 141.
About one in four couples changed the budget because of the economy. Of that group, 77 percent raised the number. Sixteen percent cut it.
The hall minimum
Korea's Consumer Agency priced wedding services in February 2026 at 21.4 million won on average, about $14,000 in the JoongAng Daily's conversion. That figure is the hall plus the studio, dress, and makeup package. It leaves out the apartment, the cash gifts, and the honeymoon.
For a course meal, halls required a guarantee of 218 guests on average. In Seoul and four other regions, that minimum averaged 224. The couple pays for those plates even if fewer people come.
The exceptions
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez married in Venice in June 2025. It was a three-day party for roughly 200 to 250 guests. Luca Zaia, president of the Veneto region, put the cost at 40 to 48 million euros.
Forbes, after talking with local vendors, estimated at least $20 million. The couple has not confirmed either number.
That headcount sits near a Seoul course-meal minimum. Those estimates start in the tens of millions.
A year earlier, Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant married in Mumbai. The weekend filled a convention centre, and performers were flown in. The family did not publish what it cost.
If someone calls it cheap
If a parent says a family list looks cheap, half of U.S. couples in the Knot study spent $24,000 or less. A course-meal contract can still bill for more than 200 people.
Write the names that have to be in the room before anyone else adds a table. Everyone else can hear about it afterward.
Further reading
- Fighting About Wedding Costs (When the Spreadsheet Becomes the Third Partner)
- When You Regret How Big the Wedding Was
- Fighting About the Wedding Guest List (When Every Cousin Is "Mandatory")
- Moon Geun-young Chose a Family Meal Over a Spectacle Wedding
- First Year of Marriage When You Are Still Paying for the Wedding