In South Korea’s wedding service industry, where foreign professionals often struggle to gain entry, a young Vietnamese designer is steadily making her mark.
Pham Thu Nga, now a wedding dress designer at Rose Rosa Wedding—one of the country’s leading luxury bridal brands—never received formal training in wedding dressmaking. Yet her early years spent in a household filled with fabric, thread, and sewing machines, guided by her mother’s two decades of experience in garment design, nurtured a deep passion for fashion that has carried her into one of the most exclusive corners of Korea’s bridal world.
After graduating from high school, Thu Nga applied to the National Economics University in Hanoi as a prerequisite to convince her family to allow her to study abroad. After being accepted, she went to Korea to study beauty. But it was here that she decided to shift her focus to fashion design, a path she knew wouldn't be easy and wouldn't receive full support from her family.
Thu Nga studied fashion design at Kyung Hee University, one of South Korea's prestigious universities. This was a high-cost field of study, but unfortunately, her family faced a financial crisis, risking they wouldn't be able to continue supporting her education. Undeterred, Thu Nga diligently prepared her scholarship application. With hard work and dedication, she won a full scholarship for her first semester, becoming the international student with the highest entrance interview score at the time.
Thu Nga’s fashion education opened doors across the industry, from design and materials to production, marketing and business strategy. Amid this wide-ranging training she quickly defined her ambition to become a wedding dress designer. The vision of brides on their wedding day—radiant, joyful and surrounded by love—became her inspiration and the driving force behind her determination to pursue one of fashion’s most demanding specialties.
Aware of the gap in her specialized knowledge, Thu Nga continued to study a specialized training course in Korean wedding dress design lasting over 6 months. She likened herself to "a blank sheet of paper" at that time, relearning from scratch design thinking, pattern-making techniques, material handling, and the strict standards of Korean wedding dresses.
While pursuing her studies, Thu Nga sought out small design studios, determined to gain hands-on experience and strengthen her professional portfolio. Breaking into the Korean wedding dress industry proved daunting, as opportunities were rarely advertised and hiring often relied on internal referrals. For foreign designers, the challenge was even steeper, with employers focusing solely on proven skill and expertise rather than nationality.
Thu Nga's first professional job was at Meraki Wedding, where she received dedicated guidance on design thinking and etiquette in the Korean wedding industry. However, due to visa issues, she was forced to leave after nearly a year. Then, an opportunity arose at Rose Rosa Wedding when she was almost ready to return to Vietnam. Within just two weeks, from the interview to completing the visa procedures, she officially joined one of Korea's leading high-end wedding dress brands.
At Rose Rosa, Thu Nga takes on design roles in both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) segments, participating in the development of new collections and handling custom dress orders. Notably, as the only Vietnamese designer at the company, she also plays a connecting role, providing advice and translation services for Vietnamese brides and helping the brand better understand the tastes and wedding culture of Vietnamese customers. It was through these interactions that Rose Rosa realized the great potential of the Vietnamese market and began developing Vietnamese-language media channels, expanding her strategy to reach Vietnamese brides in the future.
