I am English, have been seeing a Polish lady for some time now, and the the time is approaching when I would like to ask her to marry me. We have both been married before.
Her father is no longer alive but her mother lives in Poland.
I want to do this the right way for her, in line with Polish custom and tradition.
Should I approach the future mother in law first? Should I buy and engagement ring? Which hand and finger would she wear it on? Anything I should be aware of?
Have been married to Polish Lady now my wife for 3 years.
My wife wears her rings in the English way .
I proposed as you would if she was English
The mother-in-law is as mad as a box of frogs so left that well alone.
One quirky thing you should know.
At first we wanted to get married in Poland for ease for her extended family.
However it was easier to get married in the UK due to a strange law they have which is this.
If you are divorced,( 1 or both) and your divorce was before Poland joined the EU you have to get a letter from you ex-Wife/Husband giving you permission to re-marry.
Then this has to go the Polish court for the courts permission which could take a couple of years ( If your lucky).
If your divorce was after Poland joined the EU non of the above applies and you could get hitched in a matter of weeks.
In the UK no additional rules for EU citizens and you will treated like any other couple.
WarwicktigerNone of those buddy! take her to bedroom do her and take her back when u want again just shove some pounds in her purse!
If I was looking for a woman like that I would not need to emigrate!
If you are divorced,( 1 or both) and your divorce was before Poland joined the EU you have to get a letter from you ex-Wife/Husband giving you permission to re-marry.
Thanks for that if, both divorces are more recent though
I've searched many places online, and am having a hard time finding out the information I'm looking for. I'm in the process of searching for an engagement ring for my beautiful wife to be, but every site that I've visited in her local area (Krakow) online, seem to have much different styles than I'm used to in the US. Mostly with the diamond sizes being a lot smaller, usually about .50ct or less, and most seem closer to .33ct. Is this custom to have a smaller center diamond in Poland? Are engagement rings less extravagant than here in the US? I was thinking of getting her at least a 1ct., but I haven't seen any near that size. Am I not looking at the right sites or stores? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Just on this topic, not about your situation OP, buy why am I the only recently turned 25 year old not married in Poland? I am okay with being single but seeing people 2-3 years younger than me getting married makes me feel very old. Some of these young men have never even left Poland.
Even 22 and 24 year old men, younger and less advanced in life than me(only just finished/finishing/still in college) are throwing away their lives early on and often they are not offering the women this fabled security. I know of at least 4 cases of this with the man and many more with the women in that age group.
Is the 42% divorce rate there because marriage is a status and people here care more about getting married and quick than who they get married to?
Just to be clear a 22 year old Polish male who works as a DJ is the equivalent of a 19 year old Irishman to me and a 24 year old Polish male finishing college is equivalent to my 20 year old self because generally imo we finish college 4-5 years earlier-to give an idea of how crazy it seems.
Eastern Europeans tend to marry earlier than in the West, I've observed. Even here in New York, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, married couples typically don't exceed their early thirties, and Polish women especially often get engaged right after high school, at the latest college, so yes, I can sympathize to some degree with your feeling "old":-)
On the other hand, there's the old saying "Marry in haste, repent at leisure!" to sober you a little!
Like in the U.K. and many other places, the age at which one marries often correlates with social class and educational attainment. The less, the earlier, the more, the later.
...therefore, jon, it would follow that as quite a large number of those who reside in areas such as Greenpont, Maspeth etc. are from the working classes, they typically learn a trade after their requisite high school years, get a job, meet a girl, marry, and usually start having a family within at the latest two to three years upon getting hitched:-)
Those who study, travel etc. will usually marry at the earliest, thirty-one, up to as "late" as the end of thirty. For a man, this remains acceptable, for a woman, the bloom will quickly start to fade on the rose!
I must concur though with jon357 on this point! Poles, as with most of the planet, were once encouraged to marry as young as possible, particularly the girls.
However, as you must know, study, military service, internships etc. take a number of years, and so one can't in all honesty and fairness expect a would-be brain surgeon, even a university teacher to marry at the same age as a carpenter, electrician etc.. whose journeyman training often lasts not more than a year compared with the 3-4 years for a doctor's residency, much less the dissertation period for a university teaching post:-)
We've also got to consider the country vs. the city. Urban Poles, women as well as men, surely must marry later than those in small towns or villages.
Plenty here in PL (millions even) aren't educated and don't have broad horizons or aspirations - marrying early might suit in the circumstances and even be a familial expectation. Among people who are better off and have degrees, I can think of plenty of people I know here who married and started a family when they were well in their thirties.
Well if that's true, the opposite of what you say is also true.
In Krakow every university educated person I know seems to be married/engaged before they are 25/26.
One student of mine has just gone 24, is an engineer, is applying for an internship, and is getting married. Internship and married in the same sentence...
One friend of mine, a part time dj/student is getting married even though he has 15 months of college to go...
The only people not getting married early in this city are usually not Polish it seems to me most of the time anyways.
My Russian friend is 33 and makes twice what I make as he's advanced in the IT sector and I honestly cannot imagine a Polish man in his position not being married.
In Krakow every university educated person I know seems to be married/engaged before they are 25/26.
I can't think of anyone I know who recently married that young. I've been to a few weddings here in Warsaw over the past couple of years and none were under 30.
Poland has still a conservative, largely homogeneous Roman Catholic population. One of the tenets of Catholicism is to take a mate, be fruitful and multiply.
Such is not as much the case in Russia:-) Most of the rest of Europe as I said earlier is just the opposite - D.I.N.K. (Double Income No Kids), many in Northern Europe don't even marry at all.
When I was first in Poland, roughly around the same time I was in Hungary and Czech Rep., I was in my early thirties and noticed practically every man my age was married with at least one child in tow. This was around the mid-'90's, but I was often asked whether or not I was married. Although I was in fact just engaged, I somehow felt that if I answered in the negative, I'd have been treated as a virtual leper:-)
You touch on it there, maybe. All my friends are getting married so maybe they say I'll get married so they stay my friends and I fit in in society too. Sounds like a socially conservative woman's worst social nightmare. Polish mates have told me that apparently single woman in their thirties are not invited to social events as they may be seen as untrustworthy around men, or whatever, if that stigma has any truth to it.
If we could combine a bit of Austrian/Czech attitudes towards these social things with Polish attitudes to friendship we would have a good central European culture I think.
I was even younger when I visited Denmark and Sweden before I was in my mid-twenties. This was some ten years earlier and almost all of my male contemporaries had had a girl friend at least since high school.
Interestingly though, the concept of proposing marriage seemed to most young Scandis at the time delightfully quaint, silly, and old-fashioned! How strikingly different from the Poles, back then especially.
Ok, here's a woman's advice. Use your common sense. Your main concern should be getting a ring that your future wife will be happy wearing every day for the rest of her life. Obviously you want to get something of decent quality but also pay attention to the design. First of all look at your girlfriend's jewellery and clothes. What's her taste? If she doesn't have any rings look at her other jewellery such as earrings, necklaces etc. Does she go for smallish, dainty designs or she does prefer bigger, chunkier pieces? Does she prefer more modern or traditional designs? What sort of clothes does she like? What's her favourite colour? Is it possible that she might prefer a centre precious stone such as an emerald, ruby or sapphire set in diamonds? Is it possible that she might like an antique ring? My own engagement ring is an antique sapphire and diamond. I have an American friend who has a diamond ring with three stones,a huge central one flanked by two smaller ones that was chosen by her husband and she confessed to me that she doesn't like it but has never said so because it would hurt his feelings. Her husband bought the stones in Amsterdam and had the ring specially made but she would have been much happier with something more modest.
You might be better off going to an actual shop where you can inspect the quality and setting of the ring. It can vary. Sometimes a ring can look very nice in photos but when you get it in your hand it's disappointing. The stone may be ok, but the colour of the gold, just the whole feel of the thing can be 'cheap'. Also if you go to a shop you can ask advice of the staff. Just tell them your budget and let them show you their most popular items in that price range. However, If you've been looking online at her local shops, you can be sure that they're stocking the styles that sell best.
How would any man know what jewellery a woman is 'obsessed with'?
God give me patience.Use your eyes. Look in her jewellery box you daft moo. If I asked you 'what's your girlfriend's favourite colour' and being a typical man you hadn't a clue, how could you work it out? Open the wardrobe and look at her clothes - ooh, lots of blue.............get the idea? Seriously though, if a woman doesn't have a jewellery box or hardly ever wears any, there's your clue that she won't like a big flashy ring. So you'd get her something simple. You've very young aren't you? You said twenty or something, don't worry, as Bishop Brennan would say 'it'll come to you, it'll come to you' :))
Most men wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of what they see. I certainly wouldn't have the slightest clue. Better to ask sisters and friends, or show them the box and let them figure it out.
1) Can engage in sex sin-free 2) Pressure from family and friends to get married 3) Unwanted pregnancy and strict abortion laws result in not wanting a bastard child
In countries like the UK:
1) What's sin? Some kind of body spray? 2) Be an independent woman! 3) I don't like condoms, let's use the pull out method. If anything goes wrong we can abort/adopt/use the MA pill from over the counter. We also have 19 available forms of contraception to choose from.
Just ignore the giant wedding ring thing. I personally consider this a scam/social construct. This idea that you have to pay obscene amount of many for a wedding ring to show your wife to be that you love her is BS for me. I mean, that can be true, but only if she's very shallow.
I'd much rather to spend the money on a honeymoon.
