The Bride Buyers
A controversial Web site purporting to be a place for families to sell their teenage daughters as brides is revealed to be bogus. Wait till you see what the would-be grooms wrote in—and what states actually allow.
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By Jessica Bennett
Newsweek
Updated: 7:33 p.m. ET Sept 14, 2007
Sept. 14, 2007 - Like most girls her age, 15-year-old Ashlee R. is into sports, clothes and current pop music. She's a typical Midwestern teen—except that she’s looking for a husband. “She tells us none of the boys her own age are interesting to her because they ‘are still little kids’ and she is looking for an adult to start a life with,” say her parents, who’ve enrolled her on a new Web site—MarryOurDaughter.com—where they’ve set the “price” for her hand as $37,500.
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Makayla S. is also 15, a traditional girl, a homebody who “cooks like a chef and decorates like Martha Stewart.” She has a cheerful, upbeat outlook on life and spends a lot of time laughing. Her bride price? $24,995.
Before you get too upset, stop: MarryOurDaughter.com isn't real—it’s a hoax. Nonetheless, the site—which claims to be a matching service for followers of "the Biblical tradition" of arranged marriages—has managed to fool a whole lot of people. With profiles of young girls, outrageous testimonials and solicitations for proposals (as well as a sign-up page to have your own daughter listed) MarryOurDaughter.com has received 60 million hits since it launched last week—and, believe it or not, on top of angry letters, thousands of proposals.
It's impossible to know how many of the proposals are real. But sifting through the Gmail account where they've all been directed, it's hard to believe there aren't at least a couple hopeful grooms—or parents of hopeful brides. The site’s creator, John Ordover, a viral-marketing consultant based in Brooklyn, N.Y., gave NEWSWEEK access to that account, and we sorted through hundreds of e-mails—some outraged, others, well, creepy. “Darling Makayla, Seeing your bright smile among the other girls on this site was a joy among joys—to see someone so obviously full of life and laughter made me keep coming back to your profile,” writes one suitor, who identifies himself as Mark B. “I want to provide you with everything you need, I want to have a partnership that will last a lifetime. You love to laugh, and I would love to make you laugh for the rest of our lives ... Please consider me as a husband.”