PAKISTANI TRADITIONS OF MARRIAGE AND COURTSHIP

There is no tradition of dating in Pakistan. Which I think helps teenagers to avoid a disturbed state of mind by not getting into messy relationships, instead we have arranged marriage system for people there, believe that,

                                                       “Its better to love the one you marry rather marry the one you love”

One thing why we don’t date is that our religion does not allow it. To prevent that schools don’t have co-education but even in some universities, where there is co-education girls and boys always are seen in separate groups and classes.

The responsibility to marry the children resides with parents and usually they choose the perfect match for their kids. Pakistani’s marry their children approximately at the age of 20-26 for girls and for guys until they get a job to support their future wife and kids. Mostly in a married couple women younger in age than men by two or three years, they can be the same age but I have never seen wife being elder than her husband.

 Although a person can choose for himself but he needs his/ her’s parents’ approval. Usually what happens when parents decide that its time to marry their kid is that they start looking for a partner and if they find someone suitable they go to talk to the parents of that person to discuss the matter and try to know more about the person they had chosen. So in the first steps children are not involved. But parents can’t marry without the child’s consent of course and after introducing them to the other partner they ask for their opinion and don’t just impose some one on them.

  Eventually if they find some one on which both parents and child agree on, they decide for the date of marriage. Also the girl and the boy are allowed to meet before marriage but not without an elder.

                    

The marriage ceremony lasts three days in which the night of the first day is kind of the girl’s night called Mehndi. A huge party is held at the brides house where only girls from both bride and grooms side are invited to have fun. They dress up the bride, do henna on each others arms, sing songs and tease the bride.

The next day is called “Baraat” when the groom and his family are supposed to meet the bride and her family in a hotel where food is served while bride and groom sit together on stage where they sign forms and drink milk from the same glass (silly tradition not Islamic). There is also a tradition of exchanging rings but its not necessary. At the end of the ceremony groom is supposed to take the bride to his house. And on the third day bride and groom together are invited to party thrown by groom’s parents where bride’s relatives are also invited. This ceremony is called Waleema.

Due to all those reasons in Pakistan divorce rate is very low, personally I had never heard of one while I Pakistan. Therefore we have strong family system where parents and child live together until the children are married.