Do arranged marriages exist up to date and how effective are they? There are some reasons that will lead a guy or a girl to have no choice who to get married to but to let others decide a spouse for him or her.
Would you prefer it or would you like to go out and search for the right person and start dating her first for a reasonable period of time before marrying her? It doesn't matter the choice you make but what matters is how you get along with the person you are married to.
This kind of marriage can be good or bad just like the marriage where you choose a spouse by yourself.
Arranged marriages started long time go even during the Roman Empire.
Read the Bible (to be more particular the Old Testament) and you will come across quite a number of arranged marriages.
Believe it or not, up to date some countries and communities are practicing the culture of arranged marriage.
What is an arranged marriage? It is a marriage whereby parents or relatives choose a potential spouse for their son or daughter.
The bridegroom and bride get to know each other through parents or a relative.
The potential spouse for a child born could even be decided at birth.
Once they become mature and ready to marry, they get married to each other.
You should never confuse arranged marriage with forced marriage.
What happens in this marriage is that parents (or relatives) introduce their daughter or son to a potential spouse and thereafter let the two to get along and decide if they can get married.
It is like the matchmaking we have nowadays that is done through dating agents and the dating websites.
While you may frown and get angry upon this type of marriage, the people who practice it as their culture take pride in it.
There is honor attached to this marriage by countries/communities that practice it.
It was practiced as a way of one kingdom strengthening its relationship with another kingdom.
It is also a way of keeping money within the family of bridegroom and bride, this is more especially where the two families are business partners and they are rich.
It will be taken as betrayal by parents or relatives if the bridegroom or bride decides to get married to someone else other than the potential spouse they had chosen.
In fact, it is very serious for the bride to go against parent's or relative's choice of a man to get married to.
It becomes shameful to her family.
The good thing about this type of marriage is that they tend to last longer.
This is because the couples know that they cannot break their marriage vows.
It will be a shame for the two families if the marriage breaks up so they will do all to keep the marriage going on.
There are issues surrounding arranged marriage with regard to age of couples marrying and the motive behind parents or relatives organizing it.
Countries like Japan, India and Pakistan are commonly known to be practicing arranged marriage up to date.
In India, they are of three kinds, old school, modern and the western arranged marriage.
In the old school, the bridegroom and the bride will not know each other until the day of their wedding and this makes it difficult either one of them to reject the other.
In the modern arranged marriage, the bridegroom and the bride are introduced to one another; at least they get to know each other.
In the western arranged marriage, girls are paraded and a man will choose who to marry, just like the girls parade for King Mswati of Swaziland to choose a wife.
Currently the United Kingdom is trying to pass a law that will do way with the practice of arranged marriages.