So, today, a friend sends me a link to a very attractive young Ukranian girl on a website that “specializes” in mail order brides. Heh, I took a look through the site, and wow…there are some very good looking women with university degrees and good employment wanting to get out of their home countries. Not literally thinking about buying one (I’m single, but not ~that~ single :P), but was curious how people view this kind of thing.
My MPSIMS 
How does this work? Do you just cut them a check and they mail you a wife? How much is it? $50000+?
good question 
maybe I’ll ask for one for christmas…
Don’t really know…I can dig up the link if anyone wants it…
My housemate has a colour catalogue, also from Russia – the pictures and bios are profoundly disturbing. The cover shows an attractive woman with a badly-airbrushed/photoshopped tear in her eye. WTF? What is that supposed to communicate to potential “customers”?
I also had some friends from Taiwan who repeatedly mentioned that if I wanted a wife they knew people who made arrangements – this being a better “deal” I suppose, since the woman paid her own way.
I wonder if this sort of thing happens with any frequency with reversed genders.
I’d really like to emigrate to Australia.
::tries to imagine himself approaching a “marriage broker” to see about trading residency for sex and housekeeping::
Nah, I don’t think I’ll sell.
do prices include postage and packaging?
[slight hijack] My wife is Russian, though not a mail order bride. When I started a new job one of my co-workers asked me how I met my wife. I told him that I ordered her off of the internet like a set of clothes. I went on to expound that we had a 5 year agreement, then I was to get her virgin sister as my next wife. He totally fell for it. Both welbywife and I had a blast with the gag. [/slight hijack]
As far as I know, you basically agree to pay a fee plus the costs for immigration. I don’t know about what sort of relationship you can expect, though. IMHO, probably not good. Most of the people who sign up are simply looking for citizenship, and after they’re here and you’re in the immigration process, it’s tough to end it, and you’d end up wasting a LOT of money.
I’ve heard that some simply forward letters for a fee, while others arrange trips and meetings.
There was a 60 Minutes/ 20-20/Primetime whatever episode about it. These guys paid quite a bit of money to fly to Russia. It was like a cattle call, 20 or 30 American guys in a room with like 60 Russian women.
The women in the show seemed sincere, but the guys came across as asswipes. One complained that too many American women were feminists and lesbians. Hmmm, and he had to travel to a different continent to find someone to marry him?
They followed a few people that got married from this event, and all wound up divorced, even the guy who took his new bride back to Iowa to live with his mother!
Again, the women seemed nice, but the type of guy they want is not going to go to Russia to find a wife.
I think this is a godsend for computer geeks who make wads of $ but have no social skills for the chasing game. As long as they are not arsewipes. Fortunately, most computer geeks are nice guys.
Recently there was a great thread here about this. Some good info and points of contact if you’re really interested.
A Taiwanese-American friend tells me that spending money on a mail-order bride is a waste of money, since he has been offered brides from China whose families will pay him$10,000 for the privilege of being his wife (or, more to the point, for U.S. citizenship). Families pool money to send daughters over. Save your money, and get paid to have a wife from China.
Mmmm well educated attractive women with slavic accents
<looks in his wallet and does some mental math>
Can you fit a human being in a 2x2x1 inch box and ship them book rate from russia?
Check out the movie The Birthday Girl before you do anything.
Oh. My. God. Its the perfect term. I’m the first line of customer service here, and bloody hell, I rue the day I took this job. What we’re dealing with here is a severe lack of social skills.
shakes head
To be fair, there ARE some nice ones and assorted sweet old codgers, but the ones that really stand out are complete abusive asshats. I can kinda see how a lot of these guys aren’t getting any love from American women. I’m almost waiting for those Crank Yanker folks to call in.
I really have no idea as to why foreign women like American men. I’ve pretty much given up on them myself. I believe its a mixture of the “debonair American”, a need for a sense of security, American men seem more affectionate, faithful and loving, have less substance abuse problems and are less physically abusive.
Peace,
glarGH
I knew a guy here in the town close by who got himself some Russian woman as a bride. She is some sort of brain surgeon or something, and he marries her and brings her over, then retires and lives off her earnings. She wasn’t too bad looking either. Guy just rode around on his motorcycle all summer, and skied all winter. What a racket!
I don’t feel too awful bad. I found a woman who had a bar.
I found a site while googling for info about the Russian language… it’s run by Elena Petrova, a Russian lady now living in South Africa; it was detailed and not hype-filled and seemed fairly legit.
Aside from the usual online catalogue of photographs and introduction services, the site gave many many details on differences in social and marriage customs, warned about visa regulations, and emphasised the cost and complexity of the process of finding a Russian wife of a man in the English-speaking world.
The site ended up convincing me out of the idea–I’m not even close to the required level of resources right now–but I emailed the owner to thank her for it.
And yes, those “introduction tours” seem a little disturbing. And I was a little disappointed by the “sameness” of the women in the photographs… a little less makeup and a couple more kilos for me, thanks.