Her Hand in Marriage

link to the ilm poll

TS: "Two Princes" vs. "Rude"

eh

I'd mention it to her aul fella just to keep him happy but thered be no asking

I wouldn't even ask her at this stage tbh

Yeah, we barely asked each other. It was sort of like, "Well, you need health insurance and you can't get on my student benefits unless we're married (thanks, Catholic law school!) so we might as well go to the courthouse." Then we set a date by determining the earliest weekend both sets of our parents could come to town.

I would be extremely put off if someone I was going to marry asked my parents for my hand in marriage. Like, I would consider it an indication that it would not be a good match after all.

Disappointed at a lack of "I have no intention on ever marrying anyone" option, TBH.

When I first started dating, my father made it pretty explicit that if anyone asked *him* for my hand, his culture involved bride-prices, and he would immediately start negotiating for how many goats / skins of wine he would expect to get for me. You can imagine how amused I was not. :-/

Pretty sure that's covered under the "not married, but" options, since whether or not you ever intend on getting married you can have an opinion about which option you think is most appropriate.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I know which way most ilxors will slant on this, but I'm interested if anyone has ended up in a situation where they had to ask a father's permission or whatever. I'm mostly just totally flabbergasted at the song "Rude".

my wife expressed some mild surprise after we got engaged that i hadn't asked her dad. but i consulted her mom when i was shopping for a ring, so the family was aware. and i always got along well with her family, it seemed like such an archaic formality that i just didn't bother.

He did not ask my dad. My dad was pissed. The first thing he said was, "Why didn't he ask me first? That's the proper way to do it."

Like so mad that he made him get on the phone and sort of ask after the fact.

I asked because I knew it was an unnecessary formality that would go over like gangbusters with my in-laws and my wife thought it was adorable.

Iirc I was like, "Uh, did you ask my dad?" because I knew that it would be an issue.

i know that a lot of the gendered traditions of marriage are observed pretty harmlessly now and i have no problem w/ the bride wearing the big dress and getting most of the attention, there really is something especially icky about the idea that a grown woman's future is something to be discussed privately by her father and boyfriend before she's brought into the convo.

It is totally weird and antiquated but I honestly don't even think for my dad that it would have been anything more than a symbolic gesture of respect or something. In his mind that's just how it's done and I don't think actual permission or ownership or saying no or anything like that would have even entered his thoughts. He's big up on manners and politeness and things like that in general. Not saying it's right but I think that's just how he would have thought about it. He's old.

yeah i understand it as a pretty neutral gesture of respect/manners, which is probably all it is for most families these days. still, the subtext of the whole thing.

I didn't ask but took the five years of 'so when is the wedding?' as tacit approval. Had I asked her dad, I'm sure her sisters would found out and they can't keep a secret.

I asked, not even thinking it was a big deal or that I needed to, but later, when my wife's sister got engaged and the guy didn't ask, her father was mad at him.

enbb otm

You have to know the family you're marrying into IMO; some will not care and others will care A LOT. I knew my wife's family would care and I knew she wasn't writing them off any time soon, so causing unnecessary conflict was not part of my plan for how we would start our engagement.

Thought this was a viking hermeneutics thread, tbh

another option might be would I check it out with her whether or not I should check it out with him before asking her

its a minefield.

fwiw you'd def be expected to do the trad thing here first, and whether or not land would be discussed at that stage still prob a chance down home home

good point.

no one's parents were asked to approve my marriage
however, once a long time ago a boyfriend wrote a letter of introduction to my parents (we were in another country and he couldn't meet them irl given the circs) and i thought that was extremely polite and nice

they couldn't read it, but it was a nice thing to do

I was pretty nervous and jet-lagged. Never really crossed my mind to ask her mother, but if it had, it would've been something like "I might ask your daughter to marry me while we're away. But if I don't, let's just forget we ever had this conversation."

"Is that okay with you?"

"My name's P. Plains, btw. I've heard a lot about you."

i took a room in the new house of some friends, an old guy friend of mine and his relatively recent fiancee. when her parents came to visit and i had been scarce i heard some grumbling from her father about 'if he's gonna be living in MY DAUGHTER'S house i have the right to check him out'

whereas my feeling was more like, hey buddy i live here, YOU'RE the stranger

needless to say he checked the prospective husband out pretty thoroughly too

This is fascinating, I had no idea anyone at all did this! It never even crossed my mind. I would be shocked if my father had asked my mother's parents' permission, and they got married in 1969.

I see these Facebook photos (and Gr8080's mentioned seeing this at his former hotel jobs) where there's a Zapruder-like photographer shooting photos of the man proposing to the woman on the beach somewhere when afterward, here comes her whole damn family, in on the secret the whole time!

I've lived in the same area for 19/20's of my life and I have no idea what possesses these people to do such a thing.

I think at this point if anyone asked my dad for his permission to propose to me, my dad would be like "Does Laurel know we're having this conversation?" But that is because he knows ME. I'm sure he has no objection to it as a "polite" if outdated practice.

Speaking of politeness, just because it has passed into a quaint cultural convention doesn't change the fact that considering it "disrespectful" is because of the idea that the groom is taking property out of the father's household without his consent.

In general tho whatever the bride is down with, I figure. At this point, the dude should probably know what she'd want.

I'm going to demand a dowry in at least five-figures, even if it's a same-sex marriage.

lol that song is amazing...ly lame

I didn't ask permission.

i want to try to make a joke about getting the potential spouse and her family in on a conference call to take care of business efficiently, but i don't want to be pigeonholed as someone who only of life through the lens of conference calls

in other words it's up to readers of this thread to make up the dumb joke

You should ask the same 8-second question repeatedly to her dad, while blurring into the sofa you're sitting on and coming back clear each time.

I would find it pretty disrespectful to me and my own autonomy as a human being if my prospective partner thought someone else had the right to determine whether I should be allowed to marry.

if I'm only marrying the hand I'll ask the woman it's attached to

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lsr7cGe6m1Y/TwD0TC-rd_I/AAAAAAAAYRY/oK4ze2nj3Us/s1600/EvilDead2_081Pyxurz.jpg

heh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hN89U_XD9E

Would never do this its a bullshit thing to do

My brother did it and he made a big deal of meeting up with the guy & gave this big rehearsed speech about how he was in love with this dude's daughter & wanted to spend the rest of his life with her &c and the dad just said "that'll be nice"

Yeah, we barely asked each other. It was sort of like, "Well, you need health insurance and you can't get on my student benefits unless we're married (thanks, Catholic law school!) so we might as well go to the courthouse."

OTM. We would've married eventually but health coverage was the shotgun. We did the city hall thing, brought 4 friends and my wife's sister with us. At least we took the ferry to a different city hall (Staten Island, ooh fancy).

I did NOT ask her dad for permission and we kept him completely in the dark til it was all done. He would have done everything in his power to keep it from happening (poss incl having me roughed up) and failing that would have tried to be as involved as he could be. Her mom didn't care either way. However, I did ask my own mom for permission, kind of. I needed to know she would be more or less okay with it. She was.

I was 30. She was 35 and had been previously married. Asking for 'consent to marry' never even crossed our minds. I could see it, possibly, if the couple were still very young and had some expectations of financial support from their parents to help get themselves established. In that case, you wouldn't want to burn any bridges if you could avoid it.

my wife was estranged from her father at the time (long story, but at that point we weren't even sure he was alive/where he was), and her relationship with her mother was po tempestuous (no way was her mother going to tell me know) so no I didn't ask permission

I asked because I knew it was an unnecessary formality that would go over like gangbusters with my in-laws and my wife thought it was adorable.

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Monday, July 14, 2014 3:36 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

I asked because I knew it was an unnecessary formality that would go over like gangbusters with my in-laws and my wife thought it was adorable.

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Monday, July 14, 2014 3:36 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

― Euler, Monday, July 14, 2014 5:14 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Buttering up the future in-laws, eh? I'd go easy on that approach.

ime a good rel with the in-laws is a means to all kinds of security

Good relations with in-laws are U&K, but they can usually be established on a firmer basis if one doesn't resort to insincere flattery.

why you gotta be so rude, Aimless?

its good that Aimless knows so much about our specific situations.

why you gotta be so rude, Aimless?

I seem to have a defective internal filter. Do you know where I can go to have it fixed?

considering i needed her grandmothers diamond for the ring i kind of didnt have an option wrt this

i suppose i could have broken in

assuming thats not the firmer basis you were shooting for

"sorry about the bags over the heads and all but i didnt want to seem like i was brown-nosing"

maybe you should have broken into the house to ask them permission to come back and steal the ring at a later time

ask for permission. ask for the diamond. months later reveal the questions were not related but thanks!

triumphantly ride off into the sunset on your new Vespa

I asked because I knew it was an unnecessary formality that would go over like gangbusters with my in-laws and my wife thought it was adorable.
― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Monday, July 14, 2014 8:36 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Samesies

ride off into the sunset on your new Vespa

I've got a feeling that the relative poverty of both my family and wife's family has forged a different set of family traditions around marriage.

I proposed in Boston, where my wife is from, and we were staying at her mother's over the weekend. I woke up early the day I was going to propose and wound up having a really nice, long talk with her mom over coffee. It felt weird keeping the ring in my pocket a secret, so I told her, though I definitely didn't phrase it as a request for approval. She'd already sprung a "when are you guys getting married?" a few months earlier at our apartment over scrabble, and i knew her dad thought i was awesome too.

For the most part, she did a good job not giving anything away when my now-wife woke up, though mom-in-law-to-be was apparently unusually concerned that wife-to-be washed her hair before we went out for the day.

I'd ask for permission if it was DJP's scenario, where you're just adding the joy throguh formality. But if I even remotely saw rudeness on the horizon i'd probably pass.

ride off into the sunset on your new Vespa

I've got a feeling that the relative poverty of both my family and wife's family has forged a different set of family traditions around marriage.

― frog latin (Aimless), Monday, July 14, 2014 7:39 PM (6 minutes ago)

i wait what

He's just bitter he didn't get a wedding Vespa like the rest of us.

Iirc I was like, "Uh, did you ask my dad?" because I knew that it would be an issue.

― Airwrecka Bliptrap Blapmantis (ENBB), Monday, July 14, 2014 9:37 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

please tell me this was your immediate response (ie, before you'd affirmed or denied his request)

carl agatha otm. only got a blender.

...and Aimless rode off into the sunset on his new blender.

weird method of 'roid treatment but ymmv

http://victoryatl.com/img/pageheaders/2013/ph_married_life_b_595x250.png

RIP gabbneb.

the nebb and flow of marriage

xpost GODDAMMIT FUCK SHIT PISS

I don't think anything has ever met my preconceived expectations as completely as the GIS result for "wedding Vespa" did.

LOL, no. I didn't think about it until I called my parents to tell them. As I was dialing their number it occurred to me that this might be an issue and I was pretty sure that he hadn't (which was totally fine with me for the record). So I called them and, sure enough, after a couple mins my dad mentioned it and then I had to be like, um, he wants to talk to you and I think he wants you to retroactively ask if it's OK. :/ It was so fucking weird but I honestly think it was more of like one of those things that in his day that's how it was done and he thought it was just a nice thing and felt slightly hurt. I don't think he would have ever thought of it as giving away his property or actually thought to say anything other than sure.

my SO's father said he would say "no" to any one who asked, just to watch them squirm/mock the absurdity of it all. good fella.

I dreamt the night a few weeks back that I was on a group holiday with louise nurding and she asked me out and we fell in love and were gonna get married and we went to the airport and she said my dads brought my bags and I went to the car to get them and it was ms mac's aul fella glaring at me I woke up in bits

I would be extremely put off if someone I was going to marry asked my parents for my hand in marriage. Like, I would consider it an indication that it would not be a good match after all.

This times 10000. I am also 10000% sure that if asked, my father would act faux confused and say, "shouldn't you be asking *her*?"

also jesus h is creepy hand model creepy!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

her parents are dead. thanks thread.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

it never even occurred to me to ask. and he didn't come to the wedding because we didn't invite his insane wife (we'd seen her act at a sibling's wedding)

did not ask. did not vote.