Bride price, also known as bride wealth, bride token, is an amount of money or property or wealth paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom. (Compare dowry, which is paid to the groom, or used by the bride to help establish the new household, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage.) The agreed bride price may or may not intended to reflect the perceived value of the girl or young woman.
The same culture may simultaneously practice both dowry and bride price. Many cultures practiced bride price prior to existing records.
Read more about Bride Price: Function, The Tradition Today, The Tradition in Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words bride and/or price:
“I was disappointed in Niagara—most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“For what were all these country patriots born?
To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)