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host · 02-02-2008, 01:28 PM

This is how this ritual is done "properly" by one young man who's wedding I recently attended. Your situation, IMO, is so far flung from the actual entire courting ritual, so as you can make it up, as you go along.

Personally, I think all of it is a ridiculous anachronism, since we've evolved away from it, why even flirt with parts of it? Women are not male "property" in the US, anymore!

After meeting a young lady at his church, and developing a friendship with her over the course of a year, always spending time with her in the company of others, visiting her family, and becoming acquainted with her father, the young man I know approached her father and asked him for permission to court his daughter. Her father gave permission with the following conditions. There must be know handholding or other physical contact, no kissing unless and until the young man married his daughter, and no unescorted time spent together. They always arranged to have a "minder", a sibling of hers or a parent or friend along, whenever he picked her up in his car.

After a year of "courting", the young man asked the young lady's father for permission to marry his daughter, and it was granted. I attended their wedding last year, and after the father "gave" his daughter over to the young man, the officiating pastor announced that the couple was about to exchange their first kiss. I wasn't moved to feel I was witnessing something romantic, rather it seemed more like "ownership" of his daughter had passed from the father to the young man.

I thought that the whole ritual, and the courting restrictions, the father's "authority" were "creepy", and I had a similar reaction when I began to read your post. It's 2008, let us move forward, there are good reasons for the changes that have taken place in the "liberation" of women in our society.

If you must, I agree with asking for her father's "blessing" in advance, but even that strikes me as paying lipservice to a patriarchy that women have mostly escaped from now, after much hardship, temporary setbacks, and sacrifice.

We are not that far removed from a time when families met when their children wer still very young to enter into neogations to bind the children to marry at some future date. Does that custom seem "romantic"?

02-02-2008, 01:28 PM	#44 (permalink)
host Banned	This is how this ritual is done "properly" by one young man who's wedding I recently attended. Your situation, IMO, is so far flung from the actual entire courting ritual, so as you can make it up, as you go along. Personally, I think all of it is a ridiculous anachronism, since we've evolved away from it, why even flirt with parts of it? Women are not male "property" in the US, anymore! After meeting a young lady at his church, and developing a friendship with her over the course of a year, always spending time with her in the company of others, visiting her family, and becoming acquainted with her father, the young man I know approached her father and asked him for permission to court his daughter. Her father gave permission with the following conditions. There must be know handholding or other physical contact, no kissing unless and until the young man married his daughter, and no unescorted time spent together. They always arranged to have a "minder", a sibling of hers or a parent or friend along, whenever he picked her up in his car. After a year of "courting", the young man asked the young lady's father for permission to marry his daughter, and it was granted. I attended their wedding last year, and after the father "gave" his daughter over to the young man, the officiating pastor announced that the couple was about to exchange their first kiss. I wasn't moved to feel I was witnessing something romantic, rather it seemed more like "ownership" of his daughter had passed from the father to the young man. I thought that the whole ritual, and the courting restrictions, the father's "authority" were "creepy", and I had a similar reaction when I began to read your post. It's 2008, let us move forward, there are good reasons for the changes that have taken place in the "liberation" of women in our society. If you must, I agree with asking for her father's "blessing" in advance, but even that strikes me as paying lipservice to a patriarchy that women have mostly escaped from now, after much hardship, temporary setbacks, and sacrifice. We are not that far removed from a time when families met when their children wer still very young to enter into neogations to bind the children to marry at some future date. Does that custom seem "romantic"? Last edited by host; 02-02-2008 at 01:35 PM..