Manners, gesture and consent

Since you people seem to be interested in the wedding stuff, here's a random question for you: what sayest thou on the potential groom asking the potential bride's father for her hand? Or, as it works out more often today, having your boyfriend "ask" your dad for his "permission" to ask you to marry him? Is this a formality done before or after the actual engagement? Is it a formality? Did your parents expect it?

I hope by my odd fascination with this subject that it's obvious I didn't do this. But really, I'm very interested in it!

Before we got married I knew nothing about weddings. NOTHING. I had been to a few and they had either been grand fantastic parties or deadly dull events swathed in acres of tulle and silk flowers. I did not dream about my wedding when I was growing up, maybe because they just didn't seem to be a big deal in my family. At least, I knew my own parents pretty much just showed up to their own wedding a few days before the date and left just as quickly. I was the flower girl in my uncle's wedding, but GOD I hated those dress fittings and all I remember is my mother giving me the stinkeye from the pews whenever I bent to scratch my leg.

Anyway. The point is: Many "wedding things" I was either not aware of or had no clue about their supposed importance. Like engagement rings. I swear to you Internet, I had no interest in engagement rings until AFTER we got engaged and everyone started demanding to see my ring. There is no awkwardness quite like the priest not believing you are serious about getting married because there is no ring. (Phillip gave me a ring about two months later and I have worn it ever since because, well, I don't know if you know this, but engagement rings are UNBREAKABLE PROOF of HOW MUCH YOUR HUSBAND LOVES YOU.)

So after the fight about whether or not to get married engagement happened, Phillip said somewhat sullenly, "I guess I should probably ask your dad, huh?" And after a moment or two of did-he-really-say-that silence, I said, "What? NO! Ick!" And that was that.

I have thought about this a lot since then. Well, not a LOT. I honestly have better things to think about. Most of the time. But I have wondered to myself if my dad would have appreciated some gesture of "I'd like to marry your daughter, sir" and then he could have given Phillip a firm fatherly nod and, secretly relieved, retreated to his library, much like the father in Pride and Prejudice. (Which my dad loves, incidentally, for he is awesome.) Did I deprive my dad of participating in a Grand Traditional Gesture? Did I cheat Phillip of an opportunity to charm the socks off my parents? (Not that he needed another opportunity, for heaven's sake, they already think he walks on water.)

Even though I am gobs more appreciative of tradition and gesture and things being the way things are for probably good reasons, this is one Old World leftover that I have never quite grasped. I live in the twenty-first century. I am no one's property. I am no one's to "give away". This is not Victorian England etc. etc. I will decide for myself who I am going to marry, thank you, and if my parents hadn't approved of Phillip, I hope I would have shrugged my shoulders, quickly forgiven their horrific blindness to the walking-on-water and eloped. (Except, I probably wouldn't have, because I am timid and racked-with-guilt and embarrassingly desperate for the parental stamp of approval. Thankfully I had no reason to worry!)

I don't know. Being my own person is kind of a big deal to me. And my parents are like that too. My whole life I heard over and over again that at 18 I could do whatever I pleased. "I don't care if you don't like green beans. Once you leave this house you can eat whatever you want. For now, you are eating green beans." "No, you may not get in that car with that boy. Once you turn 18 you can drive to China with that boy, but don't think you are getting anywhere near that car NOW." Oh, how I longed to turn 18! And once I did, I swear I never heard them tell me what I could and could not do ever again. (It was actually very very weird. Like, where did my REAL parents go? I was still living their house. When I did not return home from my 18th birthday until the next afternoon, they said NOTHING. I about fell over in shock.) And every time I DID want their opinion on something, like any approval-seeking perfectionist oldest child worth her salt, they demurred and hemmed and hawed and told me I could do whatever I wanted. Which: I KNOW. JEEZ. At the time, I honestly thought that if Phillip asked my dad for permission to marry me, my dad would have probably choked on his cappuccino.

And yes, I KNOW IT IS A GESTURE. Obviously. I hope there aren't many girls who are sitting in the next room with their fingers crossed while their boyfriends are asking Dad for permission. But still, it is a gesture that bothers me on a very subtle level. Having declared the whole idea of ownership to be ridiculous, why would I want my fiance to act like it isn't? This goes for having your father walk you down the aisle too. It's pretty, I love it just as much as anyone else, I am right there bawling with the rest of the congregation, but I did not want to be a thing handed off from one man to another. I assumed it would be that way, because that's what happens at weddings, right? But we have a very forward-thinking priest (well, once he got beyond the whole ring thing) who not-so-subtly suggested we change it up a bit. So Phillip walked down the aisle with both of his parents in the procession and so did I. In essence, we were both given away by both of the people who raised us. I liked that.

Anyway, for someone who is as increasingly amazed at her old-fashionedness as I am, it's kind of a silly bee to still be hanging around in one's bonnet. I did, after all, force my guests through an entire wedding MASS and had cake smeared on my face at the perfectly average wedding reception. I'm just curious. How did it work for all of you?

Comments

[Arwen]

Well, let's see. After dating for several years (we started dating in high school) and going back and forth on the marriage thing for a while, we finally decided to get married the following summer. Then Bryan got to tell his parents, and my dad. Now, technically, he asked my dad, but since we had already decided to get married, and picked a date and everything, it was just a formality, since we definitely weren't waiting on his blessing. On the other hand, we didn't get formally engaged until a few months later, and we wouldn't have announced our engagement without at least warning my parents first.

I dunno. It's incomprehensible to me that I would have ever been in a situation where I wanted to marry someone my parents didn't approve of, so the "asking for my hand" would be a formality in any case. I've heard of cases where the guy asks for the dad's permission and then proposes and it's a complete surprise to the girl, which always seemed sort of sketchy and coercive to me ("Your dad says I can marry you, and you'd damn well better agree with him!"). But I appreciated that Bryan was willing to approach my dad about it after we'd decided we wanted to get married.

And oddly enough, my parents, who (I think) expect their daughters' suitors to at least run the proposition of marriage by them, are WAY better at staying out of our adult lives than my parents-in-law, who consider themselves modern and would probably never expect that particular gesture (if they had a daughter, which they don't) but are never-ending with the eternally endless advice. So go figure.

Oooh, I've hijacked your comments section!

[Antonia]

Chris didn't ask my dad's 'permission' to marry me before he proposed. I dunno, in a romantic old-fashioned way it may have been sweet, but as you point out...what would be the point?

A marriage is something that each person is supposed to enter into of their free will (indeed, it can't be valid otherwise), so asking for 'permission' shouldn't change anything as daddy's yes or no should have no impact.

I think it's a tradition developed from the fact that in the olden days men who got married were in their mid-to-late 20s, while girls were in their mid-teens, and so still very much dependents living at home. Also, marriage frequently had the secondary aims of increasing social status and family ties, and so speaking to the father, as the head of family, may have been a way of securing a good family/social relationship.

Also, strangely it is a very Protestant thing to have brides walk down the aisle with their fathers. In many Catholic countries (S. Italy, Spain, Portugal), the bride and groom walk into the Church together down the aisle, and then walk out again at the end.

[maggie]

Arwen- we pretty much did what you did- decide, pick a time, tell the folks, tell everyone else. But it was very much "Hello parents, we are getting married, hope you'll be there." We'd "laid the groundwork" and it was no surprise. And lucky for me, I share the same values and expectations as my parents (for the most part!) so of course they approved. I know people who aren't so blessed.

and Antonia- I have never been to a Catholic wedding (!!!) so I wouldn't know. (I have been to GOBS of Protestant weddings and I'm always intrigued at how they get to plan the entire ceremony!) How-to-do-the-procession WAS a big deal in our pre-cana classes though. The priest had a lot of opinions. I believe he actually said he'd rather preside over a funeral than a wedding! But he's a special case I think...

Thanks for adding your two cents!

[orangepaas]

well, we got engaged first (also no ring, for about 3 months!) and then called our parents. But if I remember correctly, he called my parents and spoke to them about it.

I can remember my parents being somewhat displeased for many reasons about our engagement, so if he had actually "asked" (would it have been my dad or my stepdad? Yikes.), they probably could have talked me out of marrying him. And I'm so glad it didn't happen that way.