Could a mail-order bride website become the new Match.com? Fortune magazine reports that websites like AnastasiaDate are trying to shed the shady images of green card goldiggers and abusive American men in search of Stepford slaves. They have re-branded the mail-order bride business ‘premium international dating’.According to U.S. immigration statistics there were roughly 200 international marriage broker agencies in 1999 that coordinated between 4,000 and 6,000 marriages. By 2010, there were twice as many agencies – and 10,000 and 15,000 couples tying the knot. [. . .]
marriage
On Friday night, I got married.
All the crazy wrong turns in relationships, dead end-leads and unusual suspects become worth it when you find the right person.
I’m getting married!
As some of you may know, my fiance proposed to me a few months ago at the top of Mulholland Drive with a mariachi band (throw in a few backwards-talking midgets, and we would be in a David Lynch movie!) I’m very excited about the idea of marriage with a person so wonderful that he works a 16-hour day and still stops at the grocery store to bring me Fresca. But I’m not excited about the wedding. And I don’t mean in a cute, ‘oh I hope it doesn’t rain’ kind of way–I mean in an ‘I won’t make it down the aisle unless I’m on so much Xanax that I’m drooling’ fashion. I hate weddings. Maybe it’s because my first experience as a part of a wedding party involved standing alongside the 18-year-old bride in a ceremony that I KNEW would be a disaster, and having my long hair set on fire by a candle afterwards. The marriage went down in flames soon after my hair. Read more
The Independent/Sleeping Around
I am writing about marriage under duress, because I have been drafted as a bridesmaid for the third time this year, and, frankly, I’m running scared. Don’t get me wrong: I love weddings, and hope to have one of my own someday. But what is it about the ceremony that reduces some seemingly rational women into Bride-zillas from hell? This summer alone, I have broken up one near-fistfight over a tea set; dealt with the fallout from a randy best man shagging two different family members; and consoled a 37-year-old woman who went to pieces because she could not be a “flower girl”. Read more