Weddingbee Blog

Be sure to check out all the posts in our Relationship Series here!

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Did you expect/consider to marry someone outside of your race/background/religion, did you do so? If so, how has it been more difficult/more interesting/etc.?

Miss Poodle - I never thought I was going to marry someone that was not Chilean, just because I thought it was going to be harder to find someone with the same goals, beliefs, sense of humor or matching personality if they were not from here. To my surprise, when I met Mr. Poodle he was that and so much more, even though he still struggles with Spanish when communicating with my family. We have so much in common that it sometimes amaze me.

We might not speak the same native language but we have pretty much the same beliefs. We respect each others’ cultures and we have learned to enjoy the differences between us. We are really excited about raising our future children incorporating all the things we love about our home countries.

As a side note, I thought it was really funny that he got excited when I warned him about the fact that we kiss on the cheek when we say “hi“ here. He’s such a goof.

Miss Parfait -I never expected to marry someone outside of my race.  I try to do everything by the books and (admittedly) will do anything to please my parents and grandparents.  Naturally, I thought this meant that I should find a nice Korean boy who could communicate fluently with everyone in my family.  His parents could talk to my parents; his grandparents could talk to my grandparents; and everyone would feel that instant bond of being from the same nation!

Of course, I went and found a Serbian boy who feels just as distant-yet-close to his heritage as I do to mine.  We grew up in the same town and attended the same schools.  Our grandparents taught us their languages and traditions when we were young, but school and friends quickly Americanized us.  We don’t share our race, but we share our background.

My grandma, who is really old-school traditional, told me that she’s happy that I’m marrying Mr. Parfait.  I was so… shocked and touched by that.  Although our elders may not speak the same language and feel that instant bond, she said that Mr. Parfait and I have a level of ease and comfort around each other that comes from our shared background.  I feel like my heritage is larger than me, and Mr. Parfait’s heritage is larger than him.  We’re both just well-loved kids who grew up in the Chicago ‘burbs, crossed paths in high school, and will end up getting married years later!

Mrs. Joey - I did expect to marry out of my race and background, but then, I’m an Asian mutt. It’s definitely been more interesting. My extended family is really, really, close and he hasn’t seen his cousins in 10 years. The dynamic between child and parent in my family is very Asian, i.e. they have an opinion on everything and I always consider it, while he doesn’t have that type of relationship with his parents. But he loves the cooking. It took him a year or so to get used to it, but now we don’t even notice the differences.

Miss Lamb - I dated a guy outside of my religion before. I was heartbroken when it didn’t work out, but we were headed in opposite directions and we couldn’t agree on some fundamental issues. Since my faith is so important to me, I knew that the man I married needed to share that faith with me. Other than our faith, Lambster and I have really different family dynamics. Though we’re both born and bred Americans, the regional differences (my family from western PA and his family from NJ/NY) are really interesting sometimes!

Mrs. Penguin - To put it bluntly, I grew up in a very Caucasian town, so I always expected to marry someone Caucasian, because that was what I was used to. The hardest part about being married to a Caucasian person is that I’m sort of embarrassed when I eat the cartilage (the knuckles) off of chicken bones or when I TOTALLY eat the fat on my steak (he cuts it off). Also, I feel bad when I heat leftovers up for breakfast and douse it in fish sauce, and he has to smell fish sauce at 9AM. I’m sure that’s not pleasant (I’m also not going to stop doing it). So… apparently it’s all food related culture shock things.

Holidays are much more important to his family, but most of it stems from the fact that his family is spread out through the country, so coming together on the holidays is important. We see my family a lot, so they don’t care about holidays (as in, they’re willing to celebrate Thanksgiving on a random weekend date in winter, rather than the actual date). This is convenient, but I think really bizarre to Mr. Peng. We have a very small family, so making up “fake” Christmas or Thanksgiving dates is not a big problem for us. Mr. Peng is always weirded out when I say it’s not a big deal if we don’t do Thanksgiving with my parents, because we can just do it the next week, or 2 weeks after actual Thanksgiving.

I can’t say it’s more difficult being married to Mr. Peng, because he’s very open to all our cultural differences and is really good at embracing my parents’ culture. I, too, have tried to integrate myself into his family with ease, but I grew up in a widely caucasian world, so I don’t think it’s really been much of a culture shock or anything like that. His mom always laughs when we go to her house and I eat her random leftovers for breakfast, though (think spaghetti and mashed potatoes and Easter ham all on one plate).

Mrs. Peep Toe - As I have said before, Mr. Peeps is Jewish, and I am not. The good news about this difference is that it forced us to dig down and reflect on our fundamental beliefs. Which it turns out, are essentially the same—to live by the Golden Rule. In essence, to be a good person to others and to the planet. What has been most surprising is the cultural identity that Mr. Peep associates with being Jewish, which I’ve always been exposed to (growing up in LA will do that to ya), but now I am a part of. Overall, we’re making up new traditions as we go along, which I think makes us a much more interesting couple. Anyone want to come over for a Chrismukkah party??

Miss Ramen - I had grown up with mostly Caucasian friends, so I guess I never really expected to marry an Asian guy, much less a Chinese guy… but I ended up with that!

But even marrying another Chinese person doesn’t guarantee complete similarities in culture; our families are from different parts of China, they all speak different dialects, different traditions are more important, etc. I think my family is a little more “Chinese” too, so I’m more open to foods like chicken feet, pig ears, etc.

Miss Star - We are both from the same cultural (Caucasian) background, but grew up very differently. It has caused us to have to figure out where the other one is coming from in terms of eating style, travel habits, perspectives on the world… but I like that we get to pick and choose from what we liked about each others’ childhoods and the way we were raised, so that our kids get the best of both worlds!

Mrs. Mary Jane - I don’t think I ever really gave a lot of thought to the culture, race or ethnicity of a person I would someday marry. I would not have been against dating someone from a different background than my own, and I know my family would accept anyone (provided that he was a good man) with open arms.

What I definitely never expected was to end up with someone from my small, religious conservative rural hometown. When I graduated high school, I wanted to distance myself from that place as much as possible. I didn’t have the happiest time there; I just really didn’t fit in at all. In fact, when I found out that our boss was hiring Mr. Mary Jane, I was horrified because I knew he was from my town; we’d gone to school together. (I’d never spent more than maybe 20 seconds talking to the guy in my whole life, yet I already had a prejudice against him!)

Turns out, he had the same prejudice against me, for the same reasons. Though our families and life-experiences are still quite different, it turns out that we were more alike than we could have imagined! As Miss Star pointed out, it’s fun to talk about our different and similar experiences and hope to mold our children’s futures in to a best-of-both-worlds scenario.

Mrs. Mascara - I had never really thought who I would marry from a race/culture/religious aspect. I would have been open to dating someone of a different background than myself, but that opportunity never presented itself since the mister and I have been dating since we were in high school.

We came from the same town, grew up with the same people, and the only real difference between our backgrounds is that I am Catholic and he is Lutheran (which really is not that huge of a difference). Has it given us less opportunity to blend cultures and make traditions of our own? Probably. But we share a lot of the same memories, we have similar relationships with our families (whom we are both very close to) and our expectations for marriage and starting our own family (how to raise our future children, etc.) are very much the same. So it works out for us!

Mrs. Bruschetta - Like Mascara, I didn’t really think much about what my future husband’s race/culture/religion would be. I think I had it in the back of my mind that I’d marry an Italian — or a half-breed Italian, like me! — since I grew up associating so closely with Mama Bruschetta’s family. And in the back of my mind, I imagined I’d meet and marry a Catholic boy, but it was by no means a requirement.

Well, Mr. Bruschetta’s Catholic, but he’s also Irish; we have loud, talkative families in common. Like me, though, he totally embraces Italian culture (and cuisine)!

Mrs. Cherry Pie - Mr. CP and I are pretty similar as far as religious and cultural background. We’re also both Caucasian. While I enjoy our similarities, I would also have enjoyed being with someone who came from a different culture, socioeconomic background, race, or religion. Variety is the spice of life, after all!

Mrs. Bee - I never in a million years expected to marry outside of my ethnicity.  I’ve always lived in areas with very large Asian populations, so most of my friends have always been Asian.  When you share an ethnic background with someone, there are many things that you automatically have in common - food, language, customs, etc.  And because I identified so heavily with my Korean background, I always thought that I needed to marry someone from the same background for them to fully understand me. Of course I was wrong because Mr. Bee “gets” me more than any Korean boy ever has.

Mr. Bee actually has a lot of ties to the Korean culture, so he can eat all of the funky foods I love.  I think loving/hating different foods can be a huge challenge in the day to day life of a relationship.  What if he hated kimchi?! OMG I would die.  Mr. Bee’s family actually lived in Korea when he was a very small child, and he even has a Korean sister!

I’m the first in my family to marry outside of my ethnicity, but I truly cannot imagine being married to anyone else.  If we were of different religious backgrounds, I think that might be a bigger hurdle to overcome than being from different ethnic backgrounds.  Luckily, neither of us is religious.

Ms. Swan - Well, I’ve talked a little bit about my experiences with Mr. Swan in a past post. I had dated both outside my race and cultural background much more than Mr. Swan had in the past. For a while before meeting Mr. Swan I had actually thought that it might be easier for me to date someone racially and culturally similar, and intended to do so. Then I met Mr. Swan and began to love who he is as a person. For us, I think being an interracial/intercultural couple has its moments, especially when our perspectives on things or our tastes are just plain different. Sometimes there’s a mild clashing, but the overwhelming majority of the time we enjoy learning something new and seeing a different way of looking at an issue. We have the added element that most of my family is not culturally American, so there’s a host of food, music and accents that Mr. Swan has to learn about and decipher. At the same time, I think Mr. Swan is enjoying being an honorary Caribbean person.

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What about you? Will you marry outside of your culture, race, or religion? How has this made your life interesting?