How to Find a Mail Order Bride If You Want an Ideal Wife?

The practice of marrying a mail-order wife has been around for centuries, ever since the conquering of the American Frontier. Yet, even after all these years, after dozens of movies being made about it, and the Internet enabled men to find brides online, many people are still unclear as to what mail-order brides even are and how to get them. So, let’s go over the practice of mail order marriages and how you can find the perfect brides online today.

What is a mail order bride?

Contrary to what the term may lead you to believe, you can’t actually “buy” mail-order brides, and they aren’t really “delivered” to you – that’d be human trafficking, and what we’re talking about has nothing to do with that.

Instead, a mail order relationship is simply a relationship that starts via mail communication – or online communication nowadays – between two people from different parts of the world, each of whom is straightforward about their desire to marry a foreigner.

This is different from many other long-distance relationships that can start accidentally between two people who weren’t initially looking to meet, date, or marry a foreigner but who just happened to meet and fall in love. Instead, a mail order relationship starts off with that intent right from the get-go.

Back in the day of the settling of the American West, settlers would write ads in newspapers, magazines, and even to churches in search of a potential bride on the Eastern coast or from Europe who would be willing to exchange letters with them and eventually move West with them. The initial terms for such relationships were “correspondence courtship” and “epistolary courtship.” Terms such as “mail-order bride” and “picture bride” were invented in the early 20th century by journalists, usually in an attempt to mock or humourize the practice.

Today, with the Internet making all the corners of the world more connected than ever, chatting up with foreigners is incredibly easy, and so is finding potential brides online interested in dating a foreigner.

Is it really legal to just go and “get” a mail-order wife?

With all of the above out of the way, you can see that going out to chat with, date, and eventually marry the perfect mail-order wife is perfectly legal. There are even entire marriage agencies about it, as we’ll detail below. So, as long as you’re merely chatting and dating with other willing and consenting adults abroad, you’re not doing anything wrong.

Of course, human trafficking itself is also a thing and a very real and significant problem no country has fully dealt with yet – that’s just not what mail order marriages are at all. 

What are the two main ways to find the perfect mail-order wife?

Obviously, the most basic and straightforward way to meet a foreigner and fall in love with them is to simply move to a different country and start dating someone there. Millions of people have done that, but that’s not a “mail order marriage” as it’s not done via mail or the Internet. Plus, if you’re going to another country explicitly with the purpose of finding a date (as opposed to just moving there to work, study, or on vacation), you may end up greatly overspending and with nothing to show for it in the end.

Instead, a proper mail order relationship today is typically done in one of two ways:

International marriage agencies

These are exactly what they sound like – businesses of various types and sizes (from large agencies to individual brokers) that specialize in finding potential brides online for men who are looking for marriage. Such a broker or agency will charge the suitor a pretty hefty fee – usually in the thousands of dollars or euros – and that fee will supposedly pay for the process of finding a consenting woman from a particular country, a few gifts for her, a few video chats, one or more plane tickets and arranged hotel stays for the two of you to meet in person, and eventually – for her to immigrate to your country.

Of course, another large chunk of that fee goes directly into the broker’s pocket, which is why such services are so expensive. The even bigger problem with marriage agencies, however, is that – while they are often quick – they take too much of the control in the dating process out of your hands. That’s why the vast majority of both scam and abuse cases when it comes to mail order marriages come from marriage agency relationships. What’s more, whenever people compare mail order marriages with human trafficking, they usually refer to marriage agency-arranged relationships.

Mail order bride sites

The other, typically slower but much better way on how to find a mail order bride online is to simply visit trustworthy sites recommended by BridesUniverse and chat with people there. Such sites effectively function as international dating sites, exclusively for men and women who want a relationship with a foreigner.

Like other “normal” dating sites, mail order bride sites typically have a combination of free features and paid features – either based on a monthly subscription or a credit system. However, those paid features rarely cost more than a few dozen to a few hundred dollars or euros at most – many times less than what a marriage agency costs.

More importantly, finding brides online through mail order bride sites is a much safer and morally simple endeavor for both the man and the woman, as here it’s just the two of you chatting – there is no agency, broker, or anyone else standing between you or behind either of you.

This process takes longer simply because normal dating itself is often a lengthy process. However, you and the girl you’re talking with decide how fast or slow to take things, when and how to chat, when, how, where, and how often to meet in person, and whether to commit to each other and truly marry and move in together. If you decide that you don’t fancy a particular date, you can simply break up with her, and she can do the same whenever she wants.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t risks when meeting potential brides online this way. There is still some risk of scams for the man and a certain risk of domestic abuse for the woman. However, as long as both parties share control over the situation and the dating process, instead of delegating most of it to some random broker or agency, both parties can work together to make sure they are satisfied. 

What is the best way to find the perfect mail order bride?

We hardly made our opinion secret above – good mail order bride sites are an infinitely safer and better way to get the perfect mail-order wife compared to dealing with marriage agencies and brokers. As long as you use trustworthy and reputable dating sites – ones that make sure to verify the profiles of the people there – all else you need to do is simply take your time to properly get to know the person you are chatting with and make sure you both can genuinely trust each other.