For that matter: straight married women, did your husband ask your father for your hand? For anyone who answers yes: how did you feel about doing so?
I am not going to apologize for asking the question only of persons in hetero marriages. Legal same sex marriage is a fairly new thing, and whether or not you think it’s just (I do), there’s no denying that customs surrounding it are only nascent. There are no long-standing customs about lesbians and gay men asking their prospective spouses’ parents for permission to wed, while there are about men asking their prospective father-in-laws for permission to marry their daughters.
I also am not going to apologize for asking the question only of married persons. Oh, people who are widowed or divorced can answer, of course, but I’m interested in what people actually have done, not what they hypothetically would or would not do.
And there’s no poll, which means if you’re going to answer it will have to be in the thread, and I can’t prevent anybody from responding even if they don’t meet my criteria and shan’t try.
Go into as much or as little detail as you feel comfortable with, of course.
I asked Birdman if he wanted to get married. He said “Yeah! Oh! Except I was going to get your dad’s blessing first!” So next time we saw them he did, and then turned around and “proposed”. It was all very laid back.
My wife’s dad died while we were still dating, right after she graduated high school in fact.
I like to think he would have stopped hating my guts eventually, but I was still a teenager when we got married, so he probably wouldn’t have approved.
Nope. We talked many times about getting married before I proposed and she never mentioned it so I took that as a cue that she didn’t want me to or didn’t care. I’m not sure if her Dad cared or not. He never said anything to me about it, nor did anyone else.
I asked my FIL for their blessing (MIL is ailing and not easily communicative over the telephone), because my now-wife wanted me to. It was commonly acknowledged that a proposal was coming (bride-to-be was already dress-shopping), and he was no more expected to object than anyone in the church when the preacher asks, “speak now or forever hold your peace.” This was essentially part of the pageantry, akin to having her father walk her down the aisle.
The first time I proposed I’d thought through the idea but it wasn’t preplanned. It just flowed from the moment and conversation. I didn’t just suddenly stop and say “Let me call your Dad.”(No it was not “during coitus” like in Big Bang Theory.)
I didn’t plan to propose again before the second and accepted attempt. She prompted the proposal. I completely misunderstood the first prompting at that. In my defense it was post-coitus and there was “nothing I wanted to ask” aside from maybe about going to get some Chinese food after a nap.
Technically there was a rehearsal/ joke proposal before we’d started dating which is the only time I got down on one knee. Lesson learned - the traditional clothed on one knee approach gets the worst results, followed by clothed and seated. Naked on my back gets a yes.
I popped the question to my husband, but he was planning to do it. If he had asked my father first, I would have taken that as a strong sign that we weren’t ready to get married–because it would have indicated 1) he wasn’t paying attention to the type of person I was, and 2) that our values were incompatible.
I already had the ring, and was on my way to the proposal. I called my sister-in-law to get father-in-law’s phone number (and she helpfully told me his name too.) I don’t think I really “asked” permission to marry his daughter. He lived out-of-state and had been absent for most of rocknrhodes’s life, so he had zero veto power. But I introduced myself as his future son-in-law and got his congratulations.
This is pretty close to how I did it. Her father is a nice guy and she loves him, but is also a severe alcoholic and has made a lot of mistakes. I wasn’t asking for permission, but I called him up and told him I loved her and I was going to take care of her and ask her to marry me. He said thanks for calling and wished us well.
No, my father was not at the time and would have never been head of our family, so his permission or blessing would have meant nothing. My husband did ask permission in the traditional manner from the elders of my family to propose to me.
No. I had already indicated that if my husband asked my father’s permission before asking me, the answer would be no from me regardless of my father’s answer.
My brother asked his father in law before proposing to his now wife. It was a prerequisite of hers.
