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Bank of Korea weddings add a whole new meaning to ‘for richer or poorer’

Would you get married at the Bank of Korea? No? Not even if you were an employee and it would be really cheap?

Because apparently, the bank is so pleased with their former success of offering weddings to employees back in the 1990s that they are doing it again.

"We've decided to open it back up again now that we have enforced security," a bank manager in the human relations and management department tells Reuters.

The manager is referring to a 200-seat auditorium hung with portraits of former central bank governors that was used in the '90s for weddings, but then stopped being used for weddings due to a lack of security.

Also see: This wedding story will bring you to tears

The bank has apparently hired a consultant for advice on how to prepare the venue for weddings staring this May.

"I had to spend hours explaining why the bride's waiting room had to look nice," says consultant You Hyoun-joo.

While the idea of getting married at a bank may ruffle the feathers of Western traditionalists, public marriages and the idea of state involvement in personal affairs is much more common place in South Korea.

"Under the country's Confucianism-driven work culture, government offices and large conglomerates such as Samsung have a duty not only to pay wages and health benefits to their employees, but also to care for their well-being and their families in ways Americans would consider creative," reports Global Post.

Also see: Groom shocks fiancée with surprise wedding

The Bank of Korea joins a long list of other South Korean public institutions who offer weddings to their employees and the public. The appeal is that these weddings are less costly and sometimes more low-key.

For example, South Korea's presidential Blue House uses one of its buildings for weddings and will select some lucky couples by lottery at the end of the month.

And earlier this year, though not at all low-key, the county held a mass wedding with 3,500 couples from 70 countries tying the knot in South Korea’s Unification Church.