I know you’re kidding, but no. I had the wives wired in series, not parallel. 
After I married my first, now late, wife, one of the first things her mother did was write her a gushing letter of how happy Mom was that her #1 daughter had married and thereby completed her destiny as a woman. It was addressed to Mrs [LSLGuy FirstName] [LSLGuy LastName]. Mom had been saving up her excitement for decades to be able to use that form of address for her favorite daughter. This was in the late 1980s, but Mom seemed to have been acculturated in the late 1880s.
My wife / her daughter’s reaction: “Great, Just great. My own mother has reduced my existence to a single lower-case “s”. The same as every other married woman she’d ever met.”
I didn’t but I had planned to because my future father-in-law was very traditional and I thought it was appropriate. But, before I did, he got drunk one night while Mrs. Charming and Rested and I were visiting and my future father-in-law TOLD me I could marry her. I smiled, thanked him, and considered the deed done. I am told that when I proposed a few months later, he was a bit chuffed that I never asked but he has never said anything to me or led me to believe he was disappointed in any way. I’m curious now if he even remembered our conversation.
I had forgotten about that, that’s even worse.
No matter who I married it would never have occurred to me.
With my first marriage she was estranged from her father who lived in a different state. I never met him. I don’t think she ever saw him before he died. Here stepfather hadn’t even gotten around to marrying her mother yet. We were both in our 30s. Since the first announcement was she was pregnant it didn’t seem to make much sense to ask permission at that point.
I was in my mid 50s when I got married again. Her father is still around but I’m way past asking anyone permission for anything.
It still bothers me. I still occasionally get a piece of mail addressed that way. I always give it to my husband, saying, i think they got your gender wrong ". If it’s important, he tells me what it says.
I got a wedding invitation addressed that way just a year ago. The father of the groom, a college friend, told his son to address it that way. The son is trans, and i had words with him. Something about respecting his name and hoping he’d respect mine. He apologized nicely, blamed his dad (no surprise, i like the guy, but he’s a fossil in some ways) and the thank you note included my first name.
ISTR that as late as the 1970s, Wimbledon referred to women players by their ‘formal’ married names. Hence, Chris Evert played as Mrs. John Lloyd.
Several years ago my ex-wife needed a date to a formal event so she took me. They had a red carpet and pictures. She kept our last name after the divorce. We made sure they listed us as “Me LastName and She LastName” instead of “Me and She LastName” for the sake of accuracy.
Not for me, but when I proposed to my wife we had been living hundreds of miles apart and weren’t even officially a thing. I had met her father during the time we were involved when we were in college (600 miles apart) but I’m not sure her parents even knew she was coming to visit me to help me move.
Both my sons-in-law asked, which I found very amusing. I think the first one actually did, and convinced the second one to do it. It’s not like me saying no would have changed anything even if I didn’t like them.
Kids these days.
I didn’t realize that was a Jewish tradition. My wife (who is Jewish, and relatives who are/were observant are/were Reform) and I decided we wanted to do that on our own.
I asked her mom. Does that count?
My wife asked me to (after I had asked her). So yes.
For my first marriage, following Japanese culture, I talked to her father but that was more of showing respect than asking permission.
I asked some Japanese and Taiwanese friends of similar age. One response:
I believe that, both today and in the past, once a couple decides to get married, they visit both sets of parents together to pay their respects. At that point, it’s not really about the father giving or refusing permission, but more of a formal yet meaningful occasion to show how serious they are.
Other friends said similar things, and noted that people getting married these days are more casual about traditions. As with the West, people are generally older and more independent when getting married than was in the past.
For my second marriage, I was in my 40s, much more advanced in my career, etc. This thread is the first time I’ve even thought of the question of asking anyone’s permission.
My wife and I met with her mother to announce our engagement. My wife has a difficult relationship with her so my wife hadn’t told her that she and her ex had broken up. They had been living together and the assumption was they were going to get married someday.
When we told her mother, she was so shocked with the news, including hearing about the breakup for the first time, that all she could do was ask about the refrigerator.
Backstory: my wife had bought an expensive refrigerator before she and her ex had broken up. My mother-in-law assumed that if got married, we would move to America and then something need to be done with the fridge. Did I say my wife has a difficult relationship with her mother?
I’ve got a teenage daughter and son. I presume that custom is done.
I didn’t ask him in advance because I didn’t tell anyone in advance that I was planning to propose.
See, I very much wanted to propose to my wife, and 28 years later I’m still happy I did. But it was my decision to make, and I could still back out at any time. The moment I told someone else I was thinking about it, though, it would stop being a choice and start being an obligation, something I had to do, and I don’t think I could have handled that kind of stress. So I told no-one. My wife, our friends and our families were very surprised.
Later on, I asked my father-in-law-to-be - who I really liked and who liked me a lot - if he was happy I was marrying his daughter. He called me and idiot and said of course.
There’s a certain … directness … common in your culture that I find refreshing.
Very similar to us, right down to the timeframe, we’ve been living together 25. We eloped and then went to lunch.
We lived together first. So that ship sailed as far as seeking parental permission. One set of units absolutely melted down about the cohabitation. They ghosted us for six months. Conservative uptight Midwest types worried about their social standing in church because horrors sex outside of marriage.
My folks were the cool ones. Eventually his came around after we decided to make it legal.
I had both my parents to escort me up the aisle, and his did the same for him.
My FiL was unusually direct even for an Israeli. He was a structural engineer and Lieutenant Colonel in the army reserves, an avid amateur historian and an extraordinarily well-read man. A big sensible man with a big sensible mustache, a lifelong socialist and atheist, he spoke at least five languages and could curse like a sailor in all of them. He would call me his favorite child.
He died ten years ago in a hiking accident. I miss him terribly.
Hahahah. Love it.
We did get married with all the fanfare. We invited too many people. There where over 100 I think. We kinda screwed that up.
It was on top of of a mountain. My Wifes cousin married us. We aren’t religious, but we where OK with that. She had a church and congregation and all that, but I could’nt even tell you the affiliation. Presbeterian? I donno. It was fun, but a lot of trouble for people that had to travel I suppose. Ya had to ride a gondola up to the top of the resort, that scared some folks.
We had rented a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the night before we were getting married, my wife cut her hand on a broken glass and needed stitches. I had to drive her down the mountain in a snow storm and find the ER. The only photo of the day was taken by the judge and her bandaged hand is visible. Then we kind of wandered in to town and found the only place open in the snowstorm and had lunch.
We got married because I was offered an overseas assignment and they would pay for her travel and living expenses, but only if she was my spouse. Two days after the wedding, I was in Aceh, Indonesia working on a tsunami relief project and she was packing up the house.