Column: First Comes Marriage

Recently an ad popped up on my Facebook feed offering me a “self-arranged” marriage.  Overlaid over a photo of a couple looking wedded and happy, it said, cheerily: Why get your parents to look for a match for you when you can do it yourself! It made for a great Twitter bon-mot (Twitter: where you go to mock Facebook) where I quoted it and said, “Isn't this just plain old marriage then, guys?” Ha-ha.

 

I got to thinking about this ad again recently because I was also recalling the wedding of an acquaintance a few years ago. He had a friend, the friend wanted to get married, he wanted to get married, so they did. No dating or falling in love, they just went for it. As far as I can tell, they seem pretty happy too.

 

I decided to Google “self-arranged marriages” to see if it was even a thing, or whether it was something the clever people behind MeetYourPartner or GetSetWed or whatever it was called had invented on their own.

Turns out, it is. Wikipedia says, “It is increasingly common in India for a couple that has met by themselves and is involved romantically to go through the process of an arranged marriage with that specific partner in mind. Since arranged marriages result in a deep meshing and unification of extended families and are believed to contribute to marital stability, many couples orchestrate their marriages with each other through the processes of an arranged marriage.”

 

Basically, not that different from making a list of what you'd like in your ideal partner from how they look to even, for the more mercenary among us, how much they earn.

 

I found also a post on popular wedding blog Wedding Sutra a post about a portal called Wedeterna. It allows you to match with people who are of your specifications. The banner ads for it have a woman in a plaid shirt crossing her arms with the text next to her saying, “Mom doesn't know I have a tatoo [sic] on my back.”

 

Further down there's a suspiciously Caucasian-looking man who is rubbing his chin pensively. His text says, “Mom doesn't know I like girls with short hair.”  The only thing I learned from all this is a) people need to communicate with their parents more and b) please. This is basically Every. Single. Dating website, except the word “marriage” is up close and prominent, so you know no one's there just for a hook-up.

 

Wedding Sutra, however, says it has “changed the game quite radically” because “Most matrimonial sites haven’t caught up yet, still catering to the older generation of parents, to whom cold statistics like height, weight, complexion, caste, religion etc are important. None are evolved enough to cater to prospective brides and grooms to whom personality and character traits take precedence.”

 

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I even had a gander at this Wedeterna, to see what was different. “Self-created profiles” seems to be a big deal for them, which makes me assume that your traditional Shaadi.coms and so on have a parent signing in for their kids. Plus they have an external agency that does background checks and weeds out fakers or scammers—which is where I guess it differs from most dating websites. They also seem to be schilling a photography service for when you do eventually get married. Optimistic. I like it.

 

It's not that easy to find love. In fact, in most cases, it's pretty tough. It's nice to see India's booming wedding start-up industry (there's so much money in weddings, you guys). It's also a hopeful reminder that there are other people who are single and looking for love too (but seriously, please talk to your parents more). 

 

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of five books, most recently a YA novel about divorce called Split and a collection of short stories about love called Before, And Then After. The views expressed here are her own.