Find a Real Mail-Order Bride for Happy Life in 2024
Who are mail order brides? It may seem that people already know everything about them, but in reality, they often focus on things that are just a relic of the past. This “industry” has changed and evolved, and modern brides, as well as the modern mail order bride market, may surprise you.
In this guide, we’re going to discuss everything about modern foreign wives—their motivation, relationship goals, personality traits, places where you can meet them, and current costs for getting a mail order bride. No myths, no misconceptions, or prejudices.
🌎 Most popular countries with brides | Ukraine, the Philippines, Thailand, Colombia |
💌 Best mail order bride sites | SofiaDate, UkraineBride4you, SakuraDate |
💰 Average cost of a mail order bride | $1,000 – $14,000 |
⌛ Average age of mail order brides | 27 y.o. |
💔 Divorce rate with brides | ~33% |
6 Best Mail-Order Brides & Dating Websites
A good international dating site or mail order bride platform is actually half the success, so you should consider the websites carefully, paying attention to both big and tiny aspects of their work.
If you don’t know where to start, take a look at some of the top niche websites we’ve already chosen for you.
Mail-order brides: Who are they?
Let’s start with some definitions.
“A mail order bride is a foreign woman who’s intentionally looking for a foreign husband, usually, from a Western country.”
One may argue that this is exactly what people think a mail order bride is, so this information is not new, and no stereotypes and myths are busted. The devil is in the details, and the historical aspect is actually one of the most important of them, so let’s take a look at foreign wives from a historical perspective.
🔥 Popular Slavic mail-order brides profiles
History vs. Modern Life: The difference you should consider
The problem is mail order brides are still seen as women who agree to marry foreign strangers in exchange for:
- Guarantees
- Easier immigration
- Financial benefits, etc.
That definitely takes its roots in the 16th-17th century when women actually agreed to marry American settlers who couldn’t start families just because there were not enough single women in exchange for land, money, and guarantees.
In more recent times, at the end of the 19th century, the mail order bride market has evolved but still had that primary financial motivation. A man was rather a client and a woman agreed to marry a person she didn’t actually know.
However, with the development of technologies, deeper emotional connections could be built online, and now, mail order brides date their future husbands as they would date their long-distance boyfriends—an authentic relationship is usually built.
How many brides are there in the modern world and where do they come from?
Now, it’s time to look at some facts and statistics on mail order brides.
Top mail order bride regions | Number of brides who got married to Americans in 2019 | Most popular countries to meet a mail order bride |
---|---|---|
Europe | 6,900 | Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia |
Asia | 15,386 | China, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan |
South America & North America | 3,367 | Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic |
Around 31 thousand women immigrated to get married in 2019, and this number only keeps growing. Men date and build relationships with single women for marriage most often—the likelihood of meeting a marriage-minded girl in these regions is much higher than elsewhere overall.
“Mail order brides” worldwide popularity by Google
Explore main countries with mail-order brides
With this map, you’ll be able to learn about the mail-order bride situation in every country of the world. Such information as marriage success rate, the best dating site available in the country, and the legality of mail-order brides in this country is available.
Source: Number of brides (applicants for K-1 visas) in 2019
💵 Try mail-order bride cost calculator
With this calculator, you can get a (rough) estimation of the mail-order bride cost.
Why do girls become mail order wives?
Some say that’s just about money and better opportunities in life, but is it actually true, and if yes, to what extent? In fact, things are way more complicated, so we’re going to explain the real motivations behind the desire to get married to a foreigner below.
Yes, there may be political and economic factors that can make a single foreign girl make the decision to look for a husband abroad.
However, it’s not just about the desire to find a rich guy with a big mansion and live in the US. This is interconnected with the strong motivation to start a family.
Many mail order brides just want to have children with a decent, loving man and raise them in a safer and more stable environment.
Is this a rational approach? Yes, it is.
Is this about them being money-hungry? Not at all.
Negative previous experiences, disappointment in local men, inability to find a family-minded partner, all this also can be the reason for taking such a step.
Every mail order bride has her own story, and we should consider that, too.
How do mail order brides work?
A lot of singles use mail-order brides services and succeed. However, there are a lot of confusing myths and stereotypes related to this industry.
Knowledge is power—if you know how the system works, you will use it properly, so take a look at this scheme:
- Choosing a mail order bride website
Single men and women looking for serious relationships choose and join the best mail order bride websites. On such niche platforms, they meet only people who have similar relationship goals.
- Getting started
Both Western men and foreign women complete their profiles and take personality tests. The procedure is usually complex for ladies—most sites let them use dating services for free, but they need to verify their identities and add a lot of information, photos, and videos.
- Online interaction
Good mail order bride websites usually have a lot of useful features, from messaging to video chat and call services. Members use search and matching services to find overseas brides and contact them using the tools offered by a company.
- Real meeting
Once a member finds a special person and gets closer to them online, a couple decides to meet in real life. A man plans a trip to Eastern Europe, one of the Asian countries, or one of the Latin countries to take the relationship to a new level and then get married.
9 Success stories for your inspiration
🔥 Popular Asian mail-order brides profiles
6 best ways to find a mail order bride
Where to search for foreign brides? Is there a perfect, 100% safe way to do it? In fact, there are 6 different options, but none of them is perfect.
They have their pros and cons, so you should know them all and set the goals—in this case, you’ll make the right decision.
1. Use reputable mail order bride websites
This is the easiest way to meet mail order brides. Such sites exist only to connect Western men and foreign women, usually, from one of the top regions with foreign wives, so you automatically get access to profiles of family-minded singles looking for foreign husbands.
Also, considering the specialization, such websites usually have a lot of advanced communication features from international phone calls to video streams and Mail service. However, such platforms can’t be used for free, and you’ll need to make some effort to learn how to distinguish good platforms from scam websites.
2. Attend international dating events
You can find a mail order bride offline even without leaving your own country if you attend some of the national-themed events in your own city. That’s a good option, considering that you won’t have to pay a lot of trips and help a mail order bride with immigration as she’s already in your country. Still, it’s largely just a matter of luck—the chances of success will be smaller than on niche websites.
3. Join dating tours
Another option is romance tours, which is basically a vacation in a mail order bride country where you attend the events arranged by the agency and meet local singles. This option may seem perfect to many singles who want to combine business with pleasure, but it’s rather expensive, and finding a good romance tour isn’t that easy as the global pandemic has nearly ruined this segment of the market.
4. Take independent trips to the countries with the largest number of mail order brides
Why pay an agency if you can just go to the destination country and meet single local women there? This is a really good option for men who didn’t mind going on a vacation to one of the top mail order bride countries anyway.
But it must be a long trip, as you will hardly find a girlfriend in a week. Ideally, you should stay for at least 2 months or even immigrate, but you’ll learn more about the country and will be able to enjoy direct communication with local women.
5. Find a marriage agency that works with foreign brides
There are matchmaking agencies that work with foreign women. Note that such services are way more expensive (prices start at $500) per month and the marriage brokers must collect a lot of information and share it with mail order brides (including your criminal records), but if you’re looking for a soulmate who’d meet all your expectations, it may be worth it.
6. Take advantage of social media platforms and online forums
That’s another free way to meet single girls from a foreign country—you can just join online threads or manually search for attractive women. However, it will take more time, and you should consider that a woman may not speak English or not search for a foreign boyfriend or be single at all.
How to choose mail order brides services
A lot depends on the service you’re going to use. After all, if you don’t get access to profiles of real women and can’t use high-quality communication features to build emotional connections, that’s definitely not going to work. How to choose the right platform?
Here are some recommendations for you:
User base, pricing policy, quality of profiles, and features are the main criteria to focus on. Research will take time and effort, but it will improve your chance of finding a mail order wife by 500%.
Why marry a mail order bride?
A lot of people wonder why online dating of foreign girls and marriages with mail-order wives have become so widespread. Why would anyone choose a woman who lives on another continent if there are thousands of hot ladies in his own city?
Well, everything is quite simple.
- The family is sacred.
Mail order brides are women who are looking for a strong and happy relationship, and they consider family to be the most important thing in life. In other words, they are not as career-oriented as most western women. That is why men who are ready to settle down choose them. - They doubt that women’s work, such as childcare and household chores, is humiliating.
Of course, girls who create a profile on dating sites are not servants. Most of them, especially Turkish girls looking for marriage, are raised in traditional families where a husband is the breadwinner, and a wife takes care of the rest. That is why they do not think that raising kids is something to be ashamed of instead of building a career. - No dating for years “to know each other better.”
Dating sites with real mail order brides have at least one significant advantage over popular dating apps like Tinder. Apps connect people who have different goals. Some people there are looking for fun, some for hookups, and some want a serious relationship with someone special. You need to type thousands of words in text messages before meeting someone with the same values and purposes. Any of the girls on good dating sites know what she wants, and it is marriage to the right man. Who knows, maybe she is looking for you. However, there are also a few things you should keep in mind when deciding whether you want to marry a foreign bride or not. - They are not for sale.
The dating website cannot guarantee that the woman you like will agree to marry you. You cannot pick a woman, say that you are rich, and bring her to her home country. However, she is likely to marry you if you show her you are a good man. - They may not know English well.
Although that could be a problem, these girls learn fast. Besides, most of them, including Pinay brides, already know it quite well. Your wife will learn the language if she is happy and motivated to understand you better.
How much do mail order brides cost?
The term “cost of a bride” is widely used, but not so many people know what it actually refers to. There was a time when it meant what it sounds like—a fixed price that a man paid to get a foreign wife, but it was over 3 centuries ago.
Now it refers to the total cost of all services that a man usually uses to find a girlfriend in a foreign country, build a relationship with her, meet her in real life, and finally, marry her in his home country.
So, let’s analyze some of the major expenditures:
- Online dating expenses.
The total amount of money you’ll spend online will depend on two things—the pricing policy of the site and the way you spend your credits.
The thing is on top mail order bride websites and niche international dating sites, members buy credits and spend them on using different services—there are no fixed prices for premium plans. In most cases, men spend around $100 per month, and $1,200 a year, respectively. - Trips to meet a bride.
You can’t marry someone you’ve never met—not only it’s a bad idea at large, but also you won’t be able to pass the check of the immigration service.
The price will depend on multiple things: the time when you buy tickets, the hotels you stay at, the restaurants you invite your girlfriend to, and of course, the country you’re going to visit. Asia is different, and so are the prices, but usually, the cost of a two-week trip ranges from $1,700 to $3,000. - Gifts & courtship.
In this case, literally, everything depends on you. You can send or give your bride a cute gift worth $50 or shower her with gifts every week. - Application for a visa.
When things get serious, and you realize you want to marry this woman, you’ll need to propose and help your bride to apply for a visa. Most choose a K-1 visa that costs around $1,000-$1,200. - Marriage.
In this case, everything depends on you, too. If you want a big wedding, that will be expensive, especially if you’re going to celebrate it in one of the Western countries, or you can just get a license for $50 and start a family. Planning your budget before you start looking for a bride is actually a very good idea.
Consider all the factors, estimate the approximate costs of meeting, dating, and marrying a girl, and then start taking action to achieve your main goal.
Regions with the best mail order bride prices
Here are the approximate costs of various services (for 2 weeks) in the three most popular regions: Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America.
Round trip ticket | Hotel | Meals | Entertainment | Local transportation | The total cost of the trip | |
Asia | $800 | $700 | $300 | $200 | $300 | $2,300 |
Europe | $600 | $1,400 | $300 | $300 | $200 | $2,800 |
Latin America | $300 | $800 | $200 | $200 | $200 | $1,700 |
❗ Note that these are the average prices—of course, you will spend more if you go to Japan and less if you go to the Philippines. You will also need to take at least two trips, so consider this, too.
All you should know about online dating
There are a lot of myths and stereotypes about online dating. Why do they appear? The thing is, online dating is the benefit of modern technologies and the modern world at large. You just need to do the thing right. We will provide you with all the info you may need to improve your life by using top dating sites.
Advantages of dating sites
Many people have certain doubts about dating sites. Many men and women are telling each other horror stories about the platforms with fake profiles, fake photos, high prices, data leaks, and so on.
We want to say that there are no such websites on the Internet, but it would be simply untrue. Still, some people forget that the online dating industry is constantly growing due to the high-quality sites that actually have lots of advantages and carry out all their functions. The thing is you need to choose the right one.
So, which benefits do the best online dating platforms have?
Such platforms connect single people
That seems obvious, but some people underestimate the importance of this aspect. Each of the high-quality dating service providers is aimed at helping people find each other. More importantly, there is always the freedom of choice: people are just communicating, know each other better, and, after all, inevitably find the right person.
Why is the probability of success so high? Because such platforms connect people who all want to build serious relationships.
Members’ profiles are verified
Sites with mail-order brides usually check everyone who is setting up a profile. Moreover, some of the largest platforms not only ask a girl to provide their IDs to prove their identity but also offer professional shooting.
All members are encouraged to complete their profiles, which is a good sign. That means that men and women will find matches not only by appearance but also by personality traits.
Signing up is completely free
Good websites do not want their members to pay to create a profile. Most of them have a reasonable policy: they let the newcomers get acquainted with the main services, quality of profiles, etc. If a client is satisfied with the quality of communication tools, he can pay for special features which define mail order bride price.
Plenty of opportunities for communication
Do you like to send long and thoughtful letters to a person you like? No problem, you can do it on any good dating platform. Do you like text chat? Enjoy real-time communication? Do you want to see the face of a woman you like? Use video chat! Want to do something nice for the most beautiful girl on the site? Send her a cute virtual or real gift.
How can we help you find a bride?
On GoBrides, you can find a lot of useful information on the best dating platforms and learn more about a foreign mail order bride you can meet there. We'll tell you how an where to buy a wife.
Here is how we choose and review the best international dating websites:
- Find all the information on the platform, read reviews, and analyze the level of customer satisfaction.
- Join the community, create accounts, test free services, and analyze the quality of profiles.
- Upgrade our profile, test the premium features, contact women to find out what is the response rate, and make sure that ladies are real and motivated to start a serious relationship.
- Make conclusions considering the quality of the online dating experience that a site provides, prices, and features.
- Create an in-depth review for all our readers.
However, reviews are not the only thing you can find on GoBrides. We also believe that knowledge is power, and all men looking for wives in foreign countries should learn more about the culture, local traditions, and values to understand if they can really find a perfect girl there.
Here, you can find articles about Eastern European women, beautiful foreign brides from China, the Philippines, and other Asian countries, Latin girls from different countries, and European female singles looking for a husband overseas.
🔥 Popular Latin mail-order brides profiles
Mail order brides scams
In 2021, online daters lost more than $500,000,000 to scams, so it's a subject we couldn't miss. Not all these victims were international daters, but those searching for a foreign bride are in danger, too.
A mail order bride scam is a common scam targeting Western men searching for a foreign partner online. In short, mail bride scams are schemes to take the money, financial information, or personal information of a mail-bride seeker. Let's be more detailed.
Potential dangers on brides sites
It’s not that you sign up on a mail bride website and lose all your money, of course. There are 3 most common scams in this industry, and here they are.
- Fake profiles steal your money.
With this type of scam, everything's pretty simple: scammers create fake profiles and try to steal your money. - Fake profiles steal your financial and personal information.
Nothing complex here—scammers gain your trust, get the information they must not get, and then either steal the money from your card/PayPal or blackmail you. - Fake dating sites.
To be fair, this is not the most common type of scam, but it's probably the most tricky one. While it's not that hard to spot a scammer on a real dating platform, fake websites don't usually look scammy. Well, at least at first glance.
You sign up, start chatting with the girls who look real, and spend days and weeks and hundreds of bucks on it—but this just doesn't go anywhere, as when you ask the girls on a date, they don't agree. Why? Because there are actually no real girls on this site, only fake profiles managed by the website team. Scam sites are designed to look real and to steal your money for as long as possible.
How to avoid mail order brides site scams?
You don’t want to lose money, obviously. Lucky you, it’s actually not that difficult to avoid the most common mail bride scams.
Here are the top 4 rules you should follow:
The dark side of mail-order brides
First of all, you can’t “buy a bride online” or “order a wife.” You can meet them online or offline, propose to them, and marry them, but it’s impossible to “order” them. It’s like online dating, but you date a girl from another country.
Well, at least that’s how it looks at first glance. Once you go deeper, you understand there are lots of problems with the mail-order bride industry—some people say it’s human trafficking, some claim all those brides are scammers, and others talk about legal and moral issues.
So let’s get to the bottom of this.
Human trafficking and exploitation
Let's define human trafficking: according to the Department of Homeland Security, human trafficking involves the use of force or fraud to obtain some labor or commercial sex act. And here's how the process of finding a foreign bride looks for most Americans: they date the girls online, chat with them, meet them IRL, and propose to them. Dating people, chatting with them, having real-life dates, and proposing to a foreign woman can in no way be called “human trafficking.”
However, according to some anti-trafficking organizations and experts, the whole mail-order bride thing can be linked to criminal trafficking in several ways. For example, Suzanne Jackson, associate professor of clinical law at The George Washington Law School, states that women using international marriage agencies may be sold into prostitution and forced into marriage.
The only thing we can say here is that this can only be applied to dishonest agencies. This may be true for a few agencies/brokers that offer people to “order a wife online,” but if it’s a dating or a mail-order bride platform with a good reputation and positive reviews, you don’t need to worry about it.
That's why it's extremely important to choose verified, trusted, and reputable international platforms where women are genuinely interested in a relationship and had not been registered there fraudulently.
Scams and fraud in the industry
Scams are a huge problem for international daters. According to the FBI, in 2022, more than 19,000 people suffered from romance/confidence scams with reported losses of $740,000,000 which means an average romance scam victim loses $39,000.
Well, that's tough. But you can minimize the risks by following these rules:
- Never send money to women on international dating websites because that’s what most scammers do: they ask you for money, plain and simple.
- Never share your credit card information or PayPal information with people online because that’s what smart scammers do: they steal your credit card information, and then you lose your money.
- Use only trusted dating websites because such websites have ID verification (typically) and protect their users from scammers.
- Be careful with photos and videos that may be used for blackmail purposes.
- Do not tell mail-order brides too much information. Revealing too much information may lead to undesirable consequences—that’s called “social engineering,” and this technique is used by professional scammers widely.
Legal and ethical issues surrounding mail-order brides
Mail-order brides are legal. You can date a foreign girl, marry her, and bring her to the US after she gets her K-1 or CR-1 visa. If you are eligible for being a sponsor and the girl is eligible for getting a K-1 visa, you have nothing to worry about.
For example, being eligible for a K-1 visa means that:
- You must have met in person within two years prior to applying for a visa
- Both you and your online bride must not be married
- You must be a US citizen
- You must prove the intention to marry each other within 90 days
- You must meet 100% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines
Most K-1 visa declines happen due to suspicious relationships or legal ineligibility to marry. If you get a bride through a registered international marriage broker, your background will be checked according to the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), but if your background is clean, you (again) have nothing to worry about.
Ethical issues are present, too. This industry has long been criticized for being a "covert form of human trafficking," but we already talked about this—if you use a real and legit dating service, you will not meet any girls who are being pressured or trafficked into international marriage.
But it's not the only ethical problem about it. Thus, a lot of people talk about the power imbalance in such marriages—but hey, we are not in the 19th century anymore!
Modern mail-order brides are often successful and educated women who are not looking for a guy who would sponsor them but for a guy who would love them and treat them with respect. Modern healthy mail-order bride relationships are about two adults from different countries who want to marry each other because they met each other online and fell in love—so there should not be any ethical problems about such relationships.
FAQ
A mail-order bride is a foreign woman who is interested in finding a husband from another country. Historically, the most popular mail-order bride regions are Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Most mail-order brides are in their 20s and have no children, but of course, it’s not uncommon to meet an older bride with kids.
A mail-order bride might cost you from $1,000 to $50,000. The price range is so wide because the price depends on various factors, such as the number of guests at a wedding party, the season you’re going to visit the foreign country of your bride, the features you’re going to use on a dating site, etc.
No, they aren’t.
Mail-order brides are completely legal, as you are not buying a person but just paying for the on-site services. More and more mail order brides come to the US and other countries, get K-1 visas (you must prove you've met your bride in real life within the previous 2 years to get it), and then legally acquire citizenship.
Yes. Mail-order marriages still exist in 2022 and are very popular in Western countries, as last year, 19,218 women came to the US to marry their foreign partners. So mail order-marriages are still popular.
Around 20% of mail-order bride marriages end in divorce, which is more than a half less compared to the US average divorce rate (44% in 2022). So mail-order brides are loyal to their husbands.
The most popular mail-order bride country in the world is the Philippines. As for regional leaders, it's Nigeria and Ghana in Africa, the Philippines and Vietnam in Asia, the UK and Ukraine in Europe, and Brazil and Colombia in South America.
First, you need to choose a trusted and popular mail-order bride website. Then, you’ll have to make your dating profile attractive. Start chatting with a foreign woman, learn her culture and dating etiquette, be respectful, meet in person, and propose to her. After that, you’ll be able to take her to the US on a K-1 visa.
There’s no way to directly purchase a woman—it’s just illegal. A man, however, can use dating services, in particular, to join international mail order bride sites that will connect him with women who want to marry foreigners from a specific region (Asia, Latin America, or Europe). The price a man pays for these services and the cost of trips he’ll take to meet his bride in real life is what the mail order bride price is made up of.
There are a lot of countries with a large number of mail order brides in three main regions—Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. In particular, these are Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela.
It depends on what you are looking for in a woman—after all, ladies from different countries, for example, from the Philippines, Ukraine or Brazil, will have different national characteristics. We recommend learning more about women from a particular country before deciding where to look for your perfect bride (all the guides can be found here, on GoBrides.net).
There’s no such thing as “buying” a mail order bride, so the “price” of a bride is actually the price of your visit to her country and the price of the marriage in her country. The cheaper the country is, the less you’ll pay, so if you want to save money, Mexico, India, Indonesia, and Cuba will work great for you.
You can’t “buy” mail order brides, actually. The process is similar to online dating—you pay for a premium membership on a special dating site (or a mail order bride site), set up your profile, and chat with mail brides from other countries.
The best mail-order bride site choice depends on the type of woman you are looking for. If you are into Slavic and European women, consider SofiaDate. Asian ladies can be found on EasternHoneys. In case you like Latin girls, try LatiDate. But if you don’t want to be limited to a certain location, you can opt for TheLuckyDate—an international dating site.
First of all, never send money to mail order brides—if a woman asks you for money, it’s 100% a scammer. Second, always google the pictures of the brides you’re chatting with. And third, use only reliable and trusted websites.
If you’re going to become a mail order bride, you can go two ways: sign up on one of the websites and start chatting with men, or visit your local marriage agency. The first way is much simpler and faster—but you need to know English to chat with foreigners.
Human trafficking is done against a person's will. It involves the exploitation of people through force or threat, and it usually includes sex trade or forced labor. Marrying a mail-order bride means having a romantic relationship with a foreign woman and building a happy family with her. Human trafficking and mail-order brides have literally nothing in common.
how can I meet real mail order brides?
Hi, Tyler! We recommend using sites with vigorous verification procedures and googling their profile photos. Otherwise, follow common online security rules: don’t send or receive money from strangers, keep your sensitive information secret, etc.
Just a heads-up for guys new to the idea: you can’t actually buy a wife or order a bride. You have to put some work into dating over a long distance, build a relationship and meet in person before you can think about marriage.