Jade Mug X Yumi’s Dress Room 제이드머그 X 유미의 드레스룸

There’s a lot of different cafe’s and types of cafes in Seoul. I’ve been to board game cafes, flower cafes, animal cafes and I’ve visited comic book/book cafes and so many themed cafes. But until Gina invited me to Jade Mug I hadn’t been to a dress up cafe.

Jade Mug offers a couple of different styles: Disney, wedding and Christmas (when we were visiting it was December). You tell one of the women working the style you want or show them the dresses you are interested in after looking on their Instagram and then you rent it to wear in the cafe and take photos with your friends for about an hour.

Prices vary depending on style and how many dresses you want to do. We did one hour for two dresses, because I picked Disney it was about 20,000 won.

Gina and I tried to do two each. Gina picked two fancy not exactly Disney not exactly wedding dresses and I stuck with Disney, deciding to live out my inner bookworm and pick Belle. They had a couple different versions of Belle’s yellow dress, both one from the animated films and one from the movies. They had this for most cases, except Jasmine. They only have her blue animated film outfit.

After we picked out our outfits and it was our turn (only so many people can be allowed to dress up at once due to the size of the space, and a reserved photo shoot that had started before opening and was spilling past the time we’d been told) we were led to the curtains to change. This isn’t a changing solo type thing. This is being helped into outfits by the staff. For the Belle ball gown it had a lace up back allowing it to fit multiple people of different sizes. Not all of their dresses are like this, in an almost one-size fits most capacity. For the second dress I was interested in, Belle’s blue and white dress, the shirt was too small for me so I was retrieved a prince’s button up and then the dress didn’t zip up all the way. But in this case I had a shirt covering me so I wasn’t particularly concerned. The same thing happened to Gina with her second dress option. So instead the owner found her another similar-ish dress to wear, which did fit.

After putting on the first dress I was asked about my shoe size, but because I wear what essentially is size 9, which is quite big for Korean shoe sizes I was platform sandals rather than fancy heels, which worked better for the most part since my dress was too long to see my shoes anyway. Our regular clothes were put in a basket and stuck behind the curtain and then we were led to the vanity where one of the ladies brushed our hair, pinned crowns onto our head and added jewelry and ribbons. It did feel a bit like being a princess.

Then we were free to wander around the various sections to take photos. And taking photos in a big poofy ball gown is not easy. Especially if your dress keeps getting in the way. But it was a lot of fun and ended quicker than I expected. The most popular spot to get a picture is their ethereal floating stair case. I didn’t get a picture of just it because the group after us was enjoying it.  Please also note that the interior changes so what was available when we went around Christmas may be different.

The staff working seemed to be a mother and daughter team. You can check out their dresses available on Instagram. But do note that in some cases if there’s a bunch of dresses with numbers it could be them asking their followers which dresses from the selection they should order. Their dresses are broken up into series that you can find in their stories. They also have prince outfits available. (I did after all borrow a prince charming shirt)

Jade Mug is open from 12pm until 12am daily. You do have to pay to rent the outfits.