Raised in Texas with “Southern manners,” Scott Sapire, 39, said he knew he would ask for his bride’s hand in marriage before he married.
“I was taught to be courteous, like opening car doors for ladies,” said Sapire, who lives in Los Angeles and is owner of Sweetwater Spice Co. “Asking Alyssa’s father for her hand was the courteous thing to do.”
It wasn’t easy, partly because the conversation took place on their first meeting. “I took him to lunch to get to know him because we hadn’t met,” he said. “But as soon as we sat down, he said, ‘So, what are we here for?’ So I went ahead and asked him.”
Sapire got Alyssa’s father’s blessing even though he had a lot going against him, he said, including the father’s fondness for her previous boyfriend. “He said he had reservations,” said Sapire. “But he had never seen his daughter so happy.”
Sapire is among the grooms who embrace the traditional wedding ritual of asking for the bride’s hand. Celebrities such as actor Adam Levine have given the trend added leverage after media reports that he asked fiancee Behati Prinsloo’s father for his approval.
The bride’s father is not always the one the groom asks, though, said Patricia Napier-Fitzpatrick, founder and director of The Etiquette School of New York.
“It could be the mom or stepfather,” she said. “That’s appropriate. Etiquette adapts to the times.”
Before Orange, Calif., health-care publicist James Chisum, 30, married Ashley Chisum, 28, a nutrition educator, in 2010, he asked Ashley’s mother, who had raised her.
“She said yes,” Chisum said, “but she was adamant that we finish college first.”
Sapire asked both parents; he said he called Alyssa’s mother after he met with her father.
“She and Alyssa are close, and she knew Alyssa was happy, so she said yes,” Sapire said. “That was easy!”
Regardless of who grants permission, Napier-Fitzpatrick offers three suggestions for the groom: “Make sure she wants to marry you. Tell him you’ll take good care of his daughter. Think about what you’ll do if he says no.”
On that last point, though, even if the father does say no, most grooms marry their betrothed anyway. But Napier-Fitzpatrick still advises men to respect a parent’s reservations.
Sapire agrees. “If (Alyssa’s father) had said no, I would have done some bond-building before we got married and would have proposed later,” he said.
For Dylan Mikina, 27, an auto parts salesman in Boardman, Ohio, asking for Debbie Donatelli’s hand was a matter of “keeping chivalry alive.”
“I’m glad I got his blessing, but I did it because of my upbringing,” he said. “I was raised to hold doors open for women and walk on the traffic side of the street.”
Still, a prospective groom might want to check in with his fiancee before approaching her parent. Although most brides consider the custom a chance for their partners to score brownie points, some veto it.
“They say they’d be insulted if their fiances did this, that they’re not property,” said Napier-Fitzpatrick.
In fact, for much of human history, brides were just that.
“Their dependency transferred from their fathers to their husbands,” explained Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage” (Penguin) and research director of the Council on Contemporary Families. “The bride had a dowry. It was a deal between the two sets of parents, not about love.”
Asking for the bride’s hand became popular in the 18th century, said Coontz, when “you could marry for love, but the men were still in charge of their daughters. Then, men had more freedom from parental dictates, but the women didn’t yet. A woman could defy her father, but she was still legally subordinate to the men and dependent upon them.”
Coontz doesn’t consider the tradition playing out today a rejection of feminism.
“In fact, it says we’ve come so far, some of the traditional gestures are OK,” she said. “Most of today’s couples view it as harmless and playful. The marriage is seldom a surprise for the father. The couple is usually already living together.”
Why don’t brides ask for blessings?
Centuries after the ritual of asking for a bride’s hand in marriage lost its pragmatic meaning, why aren’t brides asking their grooms’ fathers?
“Because the custom did originate in women’s subordination to her father, it’s hard for either the man or woman to envision reversing it,” said social historian Stephanie Coontz. “So even though most couples don’t subscribe to the patriarchal traditions behind it, they haven’t figured out an equivalent ritual that represents true mutuality or reciprocity.”
More often, “gender-bending,” said Coontz, includes women proposing or choosing their engagement rings. “I even know of several women who bought (engagement) rings for the men,” she said.
For now, at least, it appears that hand-asking remains a guy thing.
— L.M.
