Arranged Marriages

At the company where I work, almost everyone is Indian/Asian, but mostly Indian. In my engineering group, I am one of 3 white people of a group of some 20 Indian.

We had a group lunch today because two people in my group have their birthday today, and my boss said something about his wife's birthday is tomorrow, then somehow he said something about his arranged marriage. And then I was like, did you just say you had an arranged marriage?

And it turns out that every Indian person in my group had arranged marriages, and they're in their 30's or 40's, so we're not talking oldschool Indian.

They say for the men, their parents will come up with a criteria for a woman that their son will marry, I'm not entirely clear, but they must be from the right village, must speak the right language dialect, and so on.

Then the parents will present their son with a list of single women that fit the criteria. I don't believe the man gets to meet any of the women before making their choice but I'm not clear on that point.

Then the two parents' families arrange the marriage details, paying the dowry or whatever they need to do.

It's, just, so, weird!