Marriage System in India

Parent or family member set a matchmaker (Ghatak or Ghatki) to choose a prospective bride or groom who usually done via an intermediary role. A matchmaker has some social reputation for maintaining discretion and brokering successful weddings.

The family expresses their criteria for a good match to the matchmaker, which is usually heavily influenced by the personal preferences of the son or daughter but also includes family considerations. These considerations vary, but can include :

Religious and Caste : Marriage system in India differs from religion to religion, from caste to castes and from rich to poor. One who belongs to Hinduism always gets married with a Hindu's girls not any other religion and an upper caste groom always get married with an upper caste not with a lower caste.

Family status : The financial strength and reputation of both families should be same and acceptable to each other.

Profession : A boy always should be established with a good profession.

Education : Boys should be qualified with a Comparable educational levels or more educated than the girl.

Looks and physical attributes : for the brides skin should be lighter and fear, on the other hand, the groom's height is important and he should be at least a few inches taller than the bride.

Age : The groom is usually desired to be older but not by more than a few years.

Maximum case of arranged marriage, Dowry system is most common attribute. The parents of boys make an estimate of expenditure on various items like jewelers, clothes, sweets, furniture, traveling, all household goods, bike or car, bungalow or flat, and other miscellaneous expenses. Parents of girls have to arrange of above mention goods. If there have missing something then marriage will not be happen.

If there is importance from both sides, the matchmaker passes the word in both sides. If the families are new with each other or live in areas distant from each other, they will normally launch investigation through their social and relatives networks, attempting to gather as much independent information as is possible about the prospective partner.

Once there is mutual agreement between the prospective bride and groom that they would like to marry then an engagement ceremony is organized. In urban areas, the future spouses are often expected to go out on dates and develop a romantic relationship in the period between their engagement and their wedding.

After independence India become more economically strong, as a result some social changes and female liberation are found today in India. Some Modern Indian people are favor of love marriage where the first contact with prospective spouses does not involve the parents or family members.

We all knew the story- boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl gets married. But, it is important to realize that while India is much modernized in some aspects they still keep to the tradition of arranged marriages. So, the couple (boy and girl) has to inform to their parents about their own choice to fulfillment of their love through the process of an arranged marriage. These marriages are often referred to as love-cum-arranged marriages.

Some time, in case of love marriage, parent or other family members create an obstruction. They enforced to their child from away of love marriage. It is very pathetic for the lover couple. So, they choose a way of escape and they get married in a temple without their parent or family. After the marriage they fall into serious situation nobody support them. Their parent or family does not accept this marriage and collar out them from their family.

As the law of Indian government the legal age of marriage at 21 years for men and 18 years for women and after those age they touch the maturity age. So, both the girl's family and the boy's family can not take any lawful step to them if the marriage couple is matured and their family has to accept their child's choice after a long clash.