On a Friday night at Miki’s Karaoke Bar and Korean Restaurant in the Clifton neighborhood, a group of friends approached the staff with an unusual request. Acknowledging that Miki or her staff could have refused at any time, the group explained that they wanted to have a marriage ceremony on a karaoke stage.
“We felt so honored to be the location of something so special,” owner Miki Miller says. “Regardless of what their personal sentiment was that made them want to get married in a karaoke bar, it was a really special, human thing to see karaoke — a social pastime with cultural ties to sharing happiness together — be the stage (literally) for two people coming together in love and friendship.”
The couple was kind to staff and visibility in love with each other, so Miki says it was impossible to deny them. When the couple mentioned dinner reservations at another restaurant in town, the staff asked when they would like to conduct their ceremony, and they said: “in the next ten minutes.”
Miki describes jumping into action to accommodate the couple. After allowing another patron to finish their song, the staff paused the karaoke. A bartender announced to patrons what was happening and gave them the option to object — “to pausing the karaoke, not the marriage,” Miki clarifies.
Given the option to pause the karaoke or forever hold their peace, every patron was in support of a short interruption. And everyone in the bar and restaurant enjoyed being witness to the brief ceremony.
After a passionate round of applause for the couple, the next person in the karaoke queue changed their original song choice and dedicated it to the newlyweds. Miki says, “It felt like the perfect culmination of the intention of karaoke, where people are united in love (literally) over it, while strangers also got to collectively experience something so once-in-a-lifetime and see two people in love cement that on a casual Friday night between all of the Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys renditions.”
Miki never expected a wedding to happen in her karaoke bar, but says it is always her goal — and her staff’s goal — to facilitate the memories their guests want to make on stage. “So I would definitely do it all over again if someone asked!”
The bartender made the couple wedding cake shots to take in place of the cake-cutting tradition, bringing together something memorable in a short timeframe with an unexpected twist as a way to thank the couple for choosing Miki’s as their wedding venue.
This article appears in May 8-21, 2024.
