Mail Order Bride

I don't know what sort of wacky-ass mailing list I'm on. Did someone sign me up for this, or is the logic something like "This guy has a Web page. Ergo, he has to import potential mates from former USSR nations."?

—The Book of Ratings

The Mail Order Bride plot line is where a man in a Western country marries a woman from a poor country sight unseen, or seen once – and it's usually an attempt for her to immigrate to his country, not the inverse. Usually played for laughs.

If the trope is dealt with in a drama, it will be in a series like Law and Order. The mail order bride plot causes a crime or scam that results in murder. In SVU, it will be prostitution or rape, with plot complications caused by the bride's uncertain legal status.

Historically, the basic concept dates from the colonial era, possibly as far back as the mid-1600s. Early settlers, prospectors and explorers would head to distant frontiers in the Wild West, find their chances of finding a mate locally to be poor or non-existent, and by necessity attempt to arrange to have a suitable companion sent to them from the "old country" or from points on the Atlantic Seaboard or the Northeast that had long already been colonised. More recently, Japanese and Korean immigrant workers in the western US and Canada in the early 20th century would seek "picture brides", companions from their own countries of origin who would emigrate from Asia solely for the purpose of marriage. The initial introductions were through postal correspondence, providing at best a woefully incomplete description of the prospective spouses through letters and photographs.

In modern times, a mail-order bride relationship is most often a form of Citizenship Marriage, typically as a means to abandon a poor country through immigration to a more prosperous industrialised nation. And yes, there are many pitfalls and romance scams, including the "Russian Bride" variants of the Spanish Prisoner scam.

Evidently, not all foreign spouses are mail-order brides. Many international romances involve travel for other purposes (such as the deployment of Western soldiers to the United Kingdom or Europe during two world wars) where a traveller may unexpectedly fall in love with one of the locals while abroad. The army "War Brides" and "War Babies" depicted in World War II movies, from a historic time period in which many soldiers returned to their home country with a foreign bride, are a prime example.

Also not to be confused with some of the "meet at the ceremony" Arranged Marriage variants... and please don't equate this with the Girl in a Box as Human Mail unless the well-worn joke is to intentionally misuse the trope as a Literal Metaphor.

Examples of Mail Order Bride include:

Comic Books

Lucky Luke's Wife had the titular cowboy escort a large number of women across the land to their potential husbands, due to a serious gender imbalance in their respective communities. (Curiously, it was the women who got to pick from pictures of the men, while the men had no say.) The problem arises when one girl's betrothed is temporarily unavailable and Lucky Luke has to fill the husband role. It turns out to be an attempt to ensnare Luke so he can become their sheriff permanently.
The infamous 'Russian gamer brides' fake ads from Knights of the Dinner Table.
In a graphic novel entitled Mail Order Bride, a young Korean woman battles with her husband's festishization of Asian women, and his expectations of a 'mail order bride'

Film

Played to heartwarming effect in Sweetland, where a young Minnesota farmer gets a German mail-order bride around WWI. Needless to say, Germans were not exactly popular at the time, but the farmer and his wife fall in love, and he defends her against the angry townspeople.
Played very seriously in Birthday Girl, where an Englishman hires a mail-order Russian Bride. Then she and some accomplices extort him into robbing the bank that he works for using a variant on the Spanish Prisoner act.
In the "Army War Bride" films, the most famous is probably I Was a Male War Bride a Cary Grant comedy vehicle where he marries a Womens Army Corps member. Hilarity Ensues.
Mail Order Bride (2003), comedy.
Mail Order Wife (1912)!! Making this Older Than Radio.
Mail Order Wife (2004), comedy.
The plot of Once Upon a Time in the West is kicked off when a mail-order bride (played by the incomparable Claudia Cardinale) arrives at her new home just hours after everyone there was slaughtered as part of a land grab. Definitely not played for yuks, since he wanted a mother for his children and she wanted a new life.
The Picture Bride (1994), not a comedy.
A mail-order bride is also in Wagons East. Very refined lady, horrified to discover that she's stuck with seven guys who make Neanderthals look civilized.
In the 1954 movie, The Naked Jungle, Charlton Heston plays a wealthy cocoa plantation owner in Venezuela who sends for a mail-order bride, who is a widow from New Orleans. It is actually a marraige-by-proxy with his brother standing in for him during the legal ceremony. After she arrives and they meet, the two strong-willed individuals both at first regret the arrangement. However, a plague of army ants allows true love to triumph.
The astonishingly bad 1971 movie Blindman. A blind, but deadly, gunman, is hired to escort fifty mail order brides to their miner husbands. His business partners double cross him, selling the women to bandit Domingo. Blindman heads into Mexico in pursuit.
The Harvey Girls stars Judy Garland as one of these, but when she arrives, she takes one look at the prospective groom and gets a job as a Harvey Girl instead. (The Harvey Girls, who actually existed, were waitresses at Harvey House restaurants – a very prim and proper chain, America's oldest, which operated from 1875-1968 to serve the railway.)
Flower Drum Song revolves around this trope.

Literature

Sarah Plain and Tall, a children's book published in 1985, later made into a movie and stage play, is about a mail-order bride in the late 19th century.
A Reliable Wife involves a rich, lonely man in rural early 20th century Wisconsin and his mail-order bride, who has...an agenda unrelated to being a good wife.
Honolulu follows the saga of Regret, a Korean girl who travels to Hawaii as a mail-order bride in order to escape life in restrictive, Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century.
Achimas Welde from The Death of Achilles orders brides every half a year or so (with time-limited "service contracts"). He never marries them, of course, given his job, but treats them as legitimate wives for as long as they stay with him.
Picture Bride A novel by Yoshiko Uchida about a Japanese woman who comes over to America later imprisoned in internment camps
The American Mail-Order Brides Series on Amazon is a set of historical romance novels by various authors. The fifty individual books are titled in a pattern which starts with Lottie: Bride of Delaware: American Mail-Order Brides Series Book 1, listing a different first name and US federated state for each book in the series.
The Star Trek: The Original Series Tie-in Novel Ishmael by Barbara Hambly is an explicit crossover with Here Come the Brides (see below) and puts an amnesiac, Time Traveling Spock in the middle of the conflict between Aaron Stemple and Jason Bolt.

Live Action TV

Played with on CSI. One man ordered a Russian mail-order bride, killed her when she wasn't really in love with him and was planning to leave him for a less-controlling man. By the time the CSIs find her body years later he's already remarried to another mail-order bride from China.
One of Earl's friends in My Name Is Earl has a Mail Order Bride from Russia. He lives in a storage container and tends to peddle *cough* suspect wares, though he told her he lived in a fancy gated community.

"You get free shipping if they're over 30!"

Aussie soap opera Neighbours featured one character ordering a Russian mail order bride. She was deported when she tried to bribe the Immigration people.
Played in the short-lived sitcom Thanks. Differing from the usual she was an English woman being sent to Puritan-era America. When she arrives looking like a modern-day supermodel, her husband-to-be is horrified. (People of that era having a much more healthy ideal of beauty.) She ends up with the town's mayor instead.
Wonderfalls: A boy orders up a Russian bride for his widower dad. Although, at first, the boy seemed intent on marrying her himself!
Subverted on Malcolm in the Middle Francis' elderly roommate(can't remember his name at the moment) in Alaska announces he is getting a mail order bride. Francis tries to convince him not to, and on the day she is supposed to arrive, they find out it was a blow-up sex doll.
Quantum Leap once had Sam leap into a man that just got back form WWII just in time for his new Japanese war bride wife to introduce herself to his family.
It is implied that Alan Partridge's girlfriend Sonja in the second series of I'm Alan Partridge came to England on such an arrangement. She's a gregarious woman who clearly cares for Alan, which is a bit unfortunate for her since he views her with little more than contempt and is clearly only in it for the ego-boost of getting to sleep with someone 17 years younger than him.
An episode of Have Gun — Will Travel has Paladin escorting a mail order bride to her new husband out west.
A friend of the Cartwrights ordered one in Bonanza. He broke his leg, so he asked Hoss to pick her up for him. Unfortunately, the woman becomes attracted to Hoss, much to his horror and to the friend's anger.
Series three of Little Britain had Dudley and Ting Tong, the characters of a repulsive middle-aged man and his Thai mail-order wife. Each episode would reveal something untoward about Ting Tong (such as that she was actually a "ladyboy" and born in London) until she eventually invites her whole family to Britain, kicks Dudley out of his house and turns it into a Thai restaurant. Little Britain Abroad shows that Dudley's brother has a Russian mail order bride as well.
Wings had Roy order a Russian mail order bride. The bride showed up and it was clear that she really didn't like him. But, she had no choice but to marry him. At the last minute, Roy had a change of heart and let her go to marry a man she fell for.
An episode of Sex Court (a pornographic courtroom comedy aired on the Playboy Channel) had a plaintiff taking his Russian mail order bride to court over the fact that she hadn't been a virgin, and expected her to compensate his expense in full out of her own pocket. Seeing as how that detail hadn't been in the contract and the guy was a raging douche, he lost the case.
Barney Miller: Inspector Luger has a Filipina mail-order bride. He coerced Barney into writing his letters for him. They remain (more-or-less happily) married through the end of the series.
The 1968 comedy-Western series Here Come the Brides, inspired in part by the Mercer Girls (see Real Life below), which revolves around a group of 100 women brought out to post-Civil War Seattle to become wives for the men there.

Music

Blues Legend Champion Jack Du Pree's Blues For Everybody features a song called "Mail Order Woman" that extolls the perceived virtues of this trope in his comedic "harelip" voice.

Newspaper Comics

Parodied in Dilbert, when Wally mail-orders a bride from Elbonia. She turns out to be a pig (literally).
- This apparently caused protests from some men with mail-order brides, as well as some groups who accused the creator of racism. Reportedly he was surprised, as he merely meant to imply the company was faulty.

Web Comics

One of the main characters from the webcomic Krakow! accidentally orders one from Russia. It turns out to be his Russian professor's sister. Then he orders another one and it's the professor's mother.

Western Animation

Steve and his friends order a Russian mail order bride in American Dad. She disappears at the end of the episode, of course. Lampshaded in "Escape From Peal Baily" when Toshi says "Didn't I have a wife once?"
Aqua Teen Hunger Force features Carl and Shake going halfsies on a mail order bride...only to have her barricade herself in Carl's house when she first sees the two of them.
Johnny Bravo had a second season episode about this, "To Helga and Back". Johnny ordered a girl from a dating service who turned out to be a very large German tomboy. He did eventually fall for her after many Zany Schemes to repulse her, but lost her when he started acting like his usual, narcissistic self.
On The Oblongs, one of the main characters' co-workers buys a mail-order bride. By the time she got to The Valley, she was dead. No one had drilled holes in the box.
A throwaway gag on The Simpsons referred to Groundskeeper Willie ordering a mail order but being too cheap to pay the postage and her being held at the post office.
- In another episode, Marge is kidnapped by a biker gang, and Homer asks Bart to call a "Korean Love Brides" number if he fails to save her.
  - At one point, Moe did have a mail-order bride, who left Moe because she was homesick for her previous life: diving for tourist pennies in a swamp in Micronesia.
Monkey Dust had a recurring sketch much like the Little Britain example above, where a truly disgusting middle-aged man has a mail order bride who remains permanently adoring of him no matter what repulsive thing he says or does.
Beavis and Butthead - an agency dumps a Russian woman on a looking-to-score Butt-Head...she's repulsed by him and smacks him if he gets near her. She then hooks up with thug Todd, and Butt-Head sees the bright side of it, where if Todd is doing it with his "wife", that somehow makes them related. Butt-Head loves Todd...

Real Life

There is no such thing as a Mail Order Bride. The term is considered highly insulting as it implies three things.
- #1: That you can buy love.
- #2: Human trafficking.
- #3: Lack of free agency on the part of the woman.
IRL, this trope should be called International/Global Dating/Romance.
- ...which would be more ambiguous. There are plenty of other ways that someone could fall in love abroad – such as being deployed to these countries for military duty, or visiting for work, tourism or university study. Most who choose a mate from another country have some existing tie to that land; a recent immigrant seeking a spouse from "the old country" being one example. Not every international romance falls into the "mail order" category.
- And yes, there are some very awkward borderline cases which nonetheless qualify as "international"; a pair of Berliners on the opposite side of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War would be very difficult to reunite lawfully but are not this trope as they're from the same city.
Foreign brides are common from countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus, Romania, Moldova, Thailand, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, China, and Vietnam.
- But strangely not the Philippines; such businesses are illegal there.
- As the Anti Mail-Order Bride Law (passed by the Philippine congress in 1990) can only regulate businesses based in that country, its reach is limited and rather meaningless. There are still plenty of opportunities to move the agency to (nominally) another country and use the Internet to continue business-as-usual. Or only a small piece of the operation is in the Phils, as a "travel agency", while the matchmaking goes on nominally elsewhere.
- Destination countries have imposed their own regulations, such as the 2006 International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) under the US Bush administration.
There is a common stereotype that these women only want a Visa+/Green Card. This is false and loaded with Unfortunate Implications.
- 80% of "Mail Order Bride" marriages succeed in the U.S.A. versus <40% of American-American marriages.
- They can still fail in the same ways as any other marriage. Push this too far (for instance, middle-aged men seeking brides one full generation their junior) and it's just as doomed as anything else built on such a wide gap.
Roughly 10,000 men in the U.S.A. alone marry "mail order brides" annually.
The famous Mercer girls (the basis for the TV series Here Come the Brides) were brokered by Asa Mercer in the 1860s to stock the Pacific Northwest with women. At the time there was a disproportionate number of men between the West Coast (because a lot of women before were not interested in pioneering) and on the East (because regiments for the American Civil War tended to be concentrated from the same area and one battle could depopulate a town). Because of this there was a high demand on both the male side and the female and Asa could make a decent (if slightly kinky-sounding) profit off the whole enterprise.
- This looks closer to the King's Daughters model of colonisation, where poor women (« les filles du roi ») are encouraged to immigrate to some distant frontier where there are too many single men.
- Picture bride might be closer to this trope, as it involves emigration with intent to marry a specific person whom the prospective immigrant has not yet met in person.