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[WHY] Engagements that don't start with a proposal: How Korean couples commit

Published: 13 Dec. 2025, 07:00

MICHAEL LEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

A stock image of an engaged couple [GETTY IMAGES]

Just before sunrise on Aug. 16 last year, Kim Kyo-hee felt a nudge on her shoulder.

Kim, who was due to fly to Hong Kong that morning, assumed it was her boyfriend of two years waking her to make sure she wouldn’t miss her flight. But as she turned around in bed, she saw him on one knee beside her, holding up a ring.

“The way he proposed felt so sweet and intimate,” she recalled. “We took a photograph while we were still in our pajamas to mark the moment, and then he helped carry my bags downstairs and load them into the taxi to the airport.”

However, this was no ordinary trip for Kim — she was heading to Hong Kong with close friends for her bachelorette party. Her wedding in Manila, where her soon-to-be-husband grew up, was less than three months away.

While a proposal so close to the nuptials may seem startling to Western observers, it is the norm in Korea, where formal proposals often happen well after wedding planning has begun.

Why, then, do Korean proposals take place so late in the process — or sometimes not at all?

The answer lies in a fundamentally different Korean understanding of what it means to be engaged, and who usually calls the shots in planning a wedding.

Logistics over suspense

In many Western countries, couples may float the idea of marriage as a relationship becomes serious, but it’s the actual question — and the “yes” in response — that marks the beginning of an engagement.

In Korea, however, the moment an engagement becomes official isn’t the proposal — it’s when both families approve the match and agree to invest in the couple’s future together.

“Usually, Korean couples don’t simply announce their intent to marry,” explained Kim Ji-yun, CEO of the upscale wedding planning company LACIEL, who has worked in the industry for 24 years. “They might agree that they’re on the same page about getting married, but they usually seek permission from their parents before making the commitment.”

In Korea, such approval is also contingent on agreement on how to fulfill a wide range of conditions, such as wedding budgets, venues, guest lists, gifts and where the newlyweds will live. As a result, the engagement is confirmed only once both families are on board with the marriage, and the proposal becomes more of a celebration than a turning point.

“In the West, people start living independently at 18. But here, young adults continue living within close family structures, so it’s hard for marriage to be a totally independent decision by two individuals,” she added.

The engagement ring itself reflects that dependence, according to Kim.

“Unlike Western grooms, who typically save money themselves to buy a diamond ring for their girlfriends, Korean grooms usually purchase the ring with help from their parents,” she observed, adding that the ring “is often even considered a gift from the groom’s parents to the bride.”

A stock photo of an engagement ring in its box [GETTY IMAGES]

People interviewed by the Korea JoongAng Daily also remarked that discussions of marriage that took place relatively early in their relationships somewhat diminished the importance of making a formal proposal to kick-start wedding plans.

Park Ji-hyung, who married in March 2022 after a year and a half of dating his wife, said the pair spent “almost every evening” together during their first six months as a couple, leading them to realize marriage was the next logical step.

“We’d hang out late, go our separate ways to head home at 2 or 3 a.m., then wake up early for work,” he recalled of their early courtship. “At some point, we thought it would be more efficient to live together, and marriage was the simplest way to do that. So I just suggested we get married, and she agreed.”

Kim Kyo-hee similarly said that she and her husband “were certain about marrying each other early on.”

While noting that she may have regarded their relationship “with more intention and seriousness” than if she had been younger, she said that her husband was the one who brought up the idea of marriage when they started dating.

She further observed that the relative lack of a taboo in Korea against broaching the topic early in a relationship helped usher the pair toward a decision to spend their lives together.

“Westerners might think that would put a lot of pressure on a new relationship, but I don’t think many Koreans see it that way,” she said.

No element of surprise?

While surprise still exists in Korean proposals, it’s contained within a process where the outcome is already certain.

“The timing of the event is the surprise, not the question of marriage itself,” Kim Ji-yun said.

Even then, when the proposal might take place is somewhat predictable.

The wedding planner explained that nearly all of her clients take pre-wedding photos in which the bride is expected to wear her engagement ring. That means the bride often expects to receive the ring before the photo shoot, placing an implicit deadline on the proposal.

A scene captured during a typical Korean pre-wedding photo shoot. The engagement ring is usually present in such photos. [GETTY IMAGES]

Because wedding venues often must be booked a year in advance and marital housing secured months before the ceremony, couples planning to marry typically prioritize sorting out logistics over maintaining the suspense that preceeds a Western-style proposal.

Park learned this firsthand while planning his wedding, which he had hoped to hold in November 2021 but was forced to postpone to March of the following year because of a shortage of available venues during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kim Ji-yun, whose company takes what she calls a “directorial approach” to arranging weddings that suit her clients, said reservation slots fill quickly, particularly at refined venues.

Given limited venue availability, some Christian couples enter lotteries at their church for wedding slots within the year, often leaving them a few months to prepare if they secure a spot.

In the midst of planning her destination wedding, Kim Kyo-hee said she knew her fiancé would propose eventually — just not when.

“He had originally planned to do it on my birthday, about a week after my bachelorette party,” she said. “But after I said I didn’t want a restaurant proposal — which is usually how we celebrate my birthday — he pulled up the date.”

Park proposed to his fiancée at home a month before the wedding. “I thought the moment would mean more if it took place closer to the wedding, and maybe I procrastinated a little,” he recalled with a laugh.

While couples who seek LACIEL’s services tend to come from the upper echelons of Korean society — often with significant overseas experience — Kim estimated that only “one in 10” women receive a Western-style proposal that comes as a complete surprise.

One such individual was Lee Jin-ah, whose boyfriend of almost three years proposed to her by pulling out a Cartier engagement ring in the middle of a dinner to mark their 1,000th day of dating in the summer of 2016.

“It came as a complete shock, even though most people were expecting us to get married because we’d been dating for a long time,” she said. “I started crying.”

What form do most Korean proposals take?

If the West emphasizes the suspense and spectacle of the moment that a couple becomes engaged, Korean proposals tend to be polished and Instagram-ready.

While Kim Ji-yun noted that organizing proposal events is not as central to LACIEL’s business as venue coordination or wedding dress selection, grooms who do reach out tend to request help decorating a hotel suite or securing a private restaurant room.

According to her, modern Korean brides often want a proposal that can be commemorated through photographs, posted to social media and shared as a romantic milestone.

A stock photo of a man proposing to a woman over a meal on the beach [GETTY IMAGES]

She added that this sentiment has created a new kind of pressure. “The proposal is still supposed to feel special, and there is maybe an element of showing off,” she said. “Most brides would get upset if it hadn’t happened by the day before the wedding.”

However, not everyone opts for these highly curated proposals. Many engaged couples forego such events altogether or simply choose a nice restaurant to exchange pre-wedding gifts, such as the engagement ring.

“I told my husband I didn’t want a proposal in a restaurant or hotel suite, not because it’s embarrassing, but because almost everyone does it that way,” said Kim Kyo-hee.

Likewise, Park said he avoided proposing to his wife in a hotel suite because they “thought those setups looked expensive” and they wanted “to spend money on things that mattered more” to them.

By the time Park decided to propose formally, he was already living with her, and she had her engagement ring from the couple’s earlier visit to different jewelers.

Still, he wanted to create a distinct romantic moment, so he lit candles, played his clarinet and filmed the whole scene.

Lee’s proposal years earlier stands out because it happened before venue bookings, finding housing and all the rest. She said her boyfriend likely planned it that way because he knew she wanted a real surprise — or in her words, “like the ones you see in movies.”

As someone who grew up between Korea and the United States, she added she “didn’t understand” why most Korean proposals happen during wedding planning.

“In my opinion, that would make it feel like a cliché checklist item, not a romantic surprise,” she said.

Balancing romance with parental expectations

Part of the reason why proposals have become an event that is part of the wedding process itself, and not the starting point, is that marriages in Korea are rarely just about the bride and groom.

Many of the components that people consider necessary for a successful marriage, especially the ceremony and the marital home, require financial support from the couple’s parents.

One sign of the central role families play in marriages, Kim Ji-yun observed, is the preponderance of wedding guests who are not friends or acquaintances of the couple themselves, but rather of their parents.

The attendance of these contacts — and the congratulatory money that they bring — usually helps more to defray the costs of the ceremony than if the guest list were drawn purely from the couple’s social network.

An example of an envelope with congratulatory money typically given by guests at a wedding in Korea [GETTY IMAGES]

This dynamic extends to housing. Real estate has never been more unaffordable for young adults in Korea, and most newlyweds rely on their parents for help purchasing or renting a home. Traditionally, the groom’s family supplied the marital home and the bride’s family furnished it, but today the cost is often split between both sides.

As such, Korean couples often navigate dual priorities: building the marriage they want while meeting the expectations of the people helping them build it.

Park found himself juggling opinions from four separate decision-makers: himself, his fiancée, and both sets of parents.

His mother asked for their preferences for the wedding — but already had her own in mind — while his normally hands-off father summed up the dynamic more bluntly: “You may think you are the main characters of your wedding, but the parents are actually the directors, and you are the actors in this event.”

Lee experienced that when her fiancé’s mother insisted that both sides stick to the customary list of pre-wedding gifts to be exchanged between the families, with some items costing tens of thousands of dollars. Though Lee’s family complied, she remembers the tension it caused, especially because she and her own mother thought the money could be better spent on more essential items.

Park and his wife performed paebaek, the traditional bow-and-blessing ritual, at his parents’ home. Only there did he realize how much judgment older relatives placed on the gifts given to his parents by his wife’s family — something he said most grooms are “completely unaware of” until they witness it firsthand.

A stock photo of parents, center back, tossing dates and chestnuts for a newlywed groom and bride to catch. The number of dates and chestnuts caught by the couple are taken to symbolize the number of daughters and sons they will bear. [GETTY IMAGES]

Even where the couple will live — perhaps the most practical decision a newly married pair faces — can reflect parental judgment rather than the couple’s own lifestyle. Lee described being encouraged to move into a home her fiancé’s parents already owned, despite her concerns that it was too remote.

Considering that many Koreans understand marriage as a measurable investment made by families, it’s perhaps not surprising that the proposal is seen as more of a symbolic event than a pivotal one.

Still, even inside this structure, couples carve out private moments. Kim Kyo-hee said her 4 a.m. proposal remains one of her favorite memories of the marriage process.

“We wanted our wedding to be fun for everyone,” Kim said, referring to her multi-day celebration for friends and family who flew to Manila. “But the proposal — that tiny moment before dawn — was just ours.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]