With my first wife I didn’t ask, things just kind of evolved into marriage. I’m not sure if that was the reason but the FIL and I never got along.
With my second wife (traditional Thai) I asked her first and then her father. I’m extremely glad I did this. He welcomed me and did his very best to ease me into Thai culture and customs, going out of his way to overlook my terrible manners (by Thai standards) and generally getting the rest of the family to accept me. I consider asking him one of the best moves I’ve ever made.
Now I have my own daughter who’s 18 and going to college. I’m not expecting her to get married anytime soon but if the guy doesn’t ask, I’m going to be amazingly upset with him. To his credit, her regular boyfriend asked me before he ever dated her. The result was that I warmed to the guy and thought he was someone I could get along with and even enjoy rather than some kind of wannabe molester of my daughter.
All in all, I consider asking to be a very good thing. It gets the dad on the side of the prospective groom and makes things much smoother.
Can’t I get the point and still say it’s something I wouldn’t do? The root of the tradition is exactly what has been described, and some people think it’s outdated the same way they think the tradition of the father giving away his daughter at the wedding is outdated.
I did ask her father - she knew I was going to do it, but it was kind of a respect thing. She is a huge “daddy’s girl” and so it seemed like she would never take a ring otherwise.
I asked him about two weeks after I bought her the ring, and asked proposed to her about 3 weeks later…
I’m still not understanding the property thing. That was ages ago (in most cultures). I’d expect my boyfriend to ask my parents - I’m living on my own and doing my own thing and haven’t really abided by anything they tried to enforce on me that I didn’t like for well over ten years (I’m 21; I was an early bloomer) - but I consider it polite, because when my boyfriend is asking me to marry him, he’s asking me to join his family (although not necessarily leave mine), and asking my family to be tied to his family. It’s a huge question, if you have a huge, interconnected family, like both of us do (he’s Italian, I’m Italian, Irish, German, and Cherokee Indian). Not asking is only polite if you getting married really doesn’t affect anyone else. That’s rarely the case.
Not only that, but no matter how condescending it is, like I said above, your parents will always view you as their kid. Oh, sure, they know you’re an adult, and they’re proud of you, but every time they see you they think about when they could hold you in one arm (obviously, this is a best-case scenario, not something you can really apply to abusive or neglectful parents). And I have to say that as much as I eschew the concept of a traditional marriage, if my father wanted me to have one so he could walk me down the aisle, I would - nothing would give me more pride, and I would be honored to have my father walk me down the aisle. He’s not giving me away, he’s walking alongside me to the next stage of my life - is how I see it.
I’m unusually close to my parents, so maybe it’s just me, but I think a lot of parents see it this way. That they had your childhood and they’re literally walking you do the next phase of development. Excepting, as I said, abusive parents, I think it’s downright disrespectful to tout things like “I’m my own person to give away.” That’s nice, but your parents gave up a lot for you; the least you could do is give them that honor.
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