Asking for permission to marry

[hackinger]

>  whilst "asking for the father's permission" sounds frankly horrific.

 

Hi,

 

sometimes even a former head of a state asks for permission as did Helmut Kohl:

http://www.news.ch/Former+Chancellor+Kohl+s+son+engaged+to+Turkish+girl/26213/detail.htm

 

Cheers

 

hackinger

[neverending]

I unfollowed this a while back, and still won't be participating in the debates over my previous questions. However, some here might be interested to know what happened in the end.

 

I popped the question about 3 weeks ago - took a day trip to a nearby city that we've previously enjoyed visiting. I did the whole traditional shebang, made a speech, got down on one knee and proposed in a sunny but secluded spot in a park later in the day. Got a yes! I wanted a proposal she'd never forget and the tears let me know I did it right

 

As for her parents, she couldn't resist and messaged them pretty much immediately, as she didn't believe they would care about permission. They took a day to reply, in which time her mood transitioned to extreme worry that they would disapprove. When they finally got in touch, however, they were very happy for her (impressed with the ring, which is particularly nice, as her dad typically gets expensive jewellery for his family and I don't have much money to throw around.) Her dad was also apparently happy to hear that I'd asked on these forums about whether I should ask for permission - he appreciated that I had investigated the matter and tried to consider them in my decision.

 

Of course, now we've got a heap of other problems to worry about. Her parents demand that we get formally married within the year, but also want us to have a proper, expensive, western-style wedding. Due to cultural issues, we don't want to ask our parents to help in finances. The bride's parents pay in the UK, but the groom's parents pay in China - exactly the wrong way around for us! But this makes affording a good wedding in a short time-scale rather a difficult proposition.

 

Her parents also want to meet mine in the traditional Chinese marriage fashion, which involves all sorts of issues, including the fact that they don't speak the same language, and neither my parents nor hers can drop everything just now to visit another country. My fiancée and I are quite worried as to how well that first meeting will go when it does happen, as both sets of parents have very different expectations. 

 

Still, we're fairly optimistic that we'll be able to manage these expectations in time. For now, we're just trying to complete our degrees and find stable employment in the same city - we'll worry about the wedding later. My fiancée's newly sparkly finger keeps her looking on the bright side. ;)

 

Thanks again all.

[Nathan Mao]

Congrats!

[imron]

Congratulations.  Glad to hear everything worked out!

[abcdefg]

Congratulations and thanks for coming back to post.

[GaHanna]

Thanks for the reply. Congratulations, and you are right get the career on line and then go for it!

[roddy]

Excellent, congratulations!

[JustinJJ]

恭喜你！

[Balthazar]

Congratulations!

 

 

Of course, now we've got a heap of other problems to worry about. Her parents demand that we get formally married within the year, but also want us to have a proper, expensive, western-style wedding. Due to cultural issues, we don't want to ask our parents to help in finances. The bride's parents pay in the UK, but the groom's parents pay in China - exactly the wrong way around for us! But this makes affording a good wedding in a short time-scale rather a difficult proposition.

 

Her parents also want to meet mine in the traditional Chinese marriage fashion, which involves all sorts of issues, including the fact that they don't speak the same language, and neither my parents nor hers can drop everything just now to visit another country. My fiancée and I are quite worried as to how well that first meeting will go when it does happen, as both sets of parents have very different expectations.

 

 

I can relate to this... Both the financial stuff and the "families meeting" stuff.

 

Let's start with the latter, where I have some experience. The first (and so far only) time my family met the family of my Chinese girlfriend was last summer. All of us spent about two weeks together in China. While in retrospect I'm very glad they got to meet each other at a rather early stage, it was a very stressful period for both me and my girlfriend at the time. I don't think the lack of a common language was the biggest issue, in fact to some extent I think the need for translation enabled a "softening" of some of the very real cultural differences that were experienced. The cultural stuff was by far the most challenging..

 

First of all there was the money thing. My parents didn't really feel comfortable that her parents would pay for everything, and so they insisted on paying for their own hotel rooms throughout the stay. I think they felt somewhat uncomfortable only being on the receiving end (although they didn't protest too much when her parents insisted on paying for every restaurant meal). Then there is the gift thing, us Nordic inhabitants are fairly modest here. You usually don't give very valuable gifts, but instead something cute/nice/cheap (souvenirs and stuff).. So yeah, different cultures.

 

Then there's the conversations.. Again, I'm glad these happened, because I now feel like both sides have a better understanding of how the other relates to a number of issues, such as marriage, taking care of parents (keeping them at home vs. sending them in a home, etc). But there were times I felt very much under pressure, and before a couple of the meals I had a few words with my parents just to let them know what sort of things to expect.. The intention here was not to make them "say the right things" or anything like that, only to try and provide some cultural context, and prepare them for some of the differences they might experience. Again, I think the fact that everything they said to each other had to be translated (although I felt bad for my girlfriend who had to do all the work, since my Chinese is far too basic) was to some extent a benefit, because it allowed a softening of the message (again, not in a censorship kind of way)..

 

But there were definitely some challenging moments there. And fact that all of my family members (except my dad) suffered from stomach problems pretty much throughout their stay made the atmosphere rather pressed at times, as they sometimes would have liked to have no plans and just rest but did not want to appear rude as my girlfriend's parents had arranged a lot of stuff for us to see and do.

 

Although again, looking back it was very good that they had the chance to meet. My girlfriend's parents treated mine exceptionally nice and generously. Since then they have seen each other through video chat a couple of times (together with me and my girlfriend, of course), and there's no issue on a personal level in any way. There's just a couple of tricky cultural things, and I feel its hard for people over a certain age to fully comprehend such differences (although I'm using a broad brush here, I'm sure there's plenty of exceptions). So my girlfriend tries her best to remind her parents that the gift culture is just very different, and I do the same with mine. And so on, and so forth.

 

This summer her parents are actually coming to visit us (for around the same period of time), since my girlfriend is moving here for studies. We aren't really engaged in that "ring-on-finger" kind of way, but we are planning to get married in a year and half's time or so, and after the first meeting of our parents I feel like mine are now accustomed to the fact that there will probably be many questions regarding this (plans for the future, and all that). So yeah, hopefully a bit less tense this time around. I do think it gets easier each time, as most human interactions do.

 

And, caveat emptor, I've always found all sorts of family stuff rather stressful, so I'm sure more easygoing people than me will find some of the things I have described as "challenging" a breeze.

 

As for the financial aspects of a wedding, I have no experience with that. Both of us want to keep it as small and simple (and cheap) as possible. In Norway there's no custom that one side pays the whole thing (at least not that I'm aware of). So ... yeah, I don't know. Good luck, in any case!