Approximately, all and sundry nowadays know about some couples who they know, that, dated on a matrimonial website. However, it was not so times of yore. Surfing the internet for finding love was considered weird, even a bit frantic or depressive. In some cases it was the last resort to fling bachelorhood or spinsterhood!
“Marriage is a social contract between two individuals that unites their lives legally, economically and emotionally. Marriage has been deemed a way to get the families of two individuals together. In western countries, such as USA, UK etc, LOVE is generally considered a condition for marriage. However, in countries like India, Pakistan etc, LOVE is regularly defined as a total mutual devotion that comes after marriage.”
But today the equations have changed. Wedding websites, or online matrimonial sites, are a deviation of the paradigm dating websites, with a spotlight on those who wants marriage than just dating. Matrimonial sites have become very popular and a genuine way to find soul mates. People register themselves in several matrimonial sites. They are allowed to create their profile onto a searchable database kept by the website. Brides and grooms looking for their matches can search the database with personalized searches that usually include nationality, age, gender, availability of photograph and often religion, geographic location and caste.
This tradition without doubt isn’t new. Matrimonial ads have a history a decade of 400 years.
There is a book called “The Secret History of the Personal Column” which is written by H.G. Cocks, a history lecturer at the University of Nottingham, UK. As per this book, Internet dating is presently the recent adaptation of the first “Matrimonial” agencies that were there in the 1600s that facilitated forlorn bachelors search for wives through printed ads. But marketing for a bride or groom in that era was always criticised and the people who did it were always considered of as unsuccessful in some or the other way. A person who was single and has passed the age of 21 was declared more or less shocking in that age and the ads were just the last option for the men or the women who advertised for a match. However, in 1700, barely a decade after the invention of the modern newspaper, the first matrimonial service was created. These services ran ads on behalf of single men and women who were desperate to find a good husband or wife. Matrimonial agencies then became big business by the early 18th century, where they were paid for printing ads on behalf of men to search them a good wife.
The matrimonial services in 18th century via newspapers were also useful for gay men and women to meet lovers.
By the end of 19th century, these ads matrimonial ads in news papers went normal which then in the early 20th century went up with the prospect at a much inferior level than their earlier manifestation.
These ads were then mainly used for finding friends for the lonely soldier of the World War I and latter, these advertising became fashionable and contemporary. But in 1960s, these personal ads decreased again when these ads were considered for the growing counterculture in the UK, along with drug experimentation and the Beatles. During this period, in Britain, the column which was before used for personal ads was suspected again just similar to the Internet is at the present porting all sorts of scams, perversities and dangerous individuals. The police use to think that these ads were mainly placed by prostitutes and gay men.
However, the ads for matches became comparatively good enough by 1990s. More and more elements of people’s lives, including love, have gone online in the last few years, and self-promotion on the Internet in general is now just a fact of life. Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking sites.
Online dating or Internet dating took the place of newspaper ads in the late 1990s. Online dating services provided unrealistic matchmaking over the Internet, through the use of personal computers or cell phones.
Nowadays, online dating services only require a prospective member to provide personal information, before they can search the service provider’s database for other individuals using criteria they set, such as age range, gender and location. These sites also allow members to upload their photos and browse the photos of others. Because these sites are mainly broad-based, they have members coming from a variety of backgrounds looking for different types of relationships.
Overall, the above was a short brief of the history of Matrimonial Services from pamphlets in the news papers to online matrimony which is an organized web based marriage service facilitating wishful young men and women to find their suitable life partners.