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Modern Western men become attracted to foreign women and decide to pursue a bride from another country. But how much are mail order wives, how is the cost calculated, and how much will you spend from the first acquaintance right up to the wedding? These are just some of the questions we will answer today.
Best international dating website to meet foreign women
The choice of a dating site matters as much as your desire to find a wife from a foreign country. We have prepared a list of five trusted dating services with a proven reputation and an impressive success record.
- BravoDate: Perfect for meeting young single women from Eastern Europe.
- LaDate: Meet women from Latin America for a serious relationship.
- UkraineBride4You: Russian and Ukrainian brides who are actively looking for a husband.
- AmourFactory: A big and active audience of brides from Eastern European countries.
- CuteAsianWoman: The Asian women there are not afraid of making the first move.
Top regions and countries to get mail order wives
Broadly speaking, you can marry a mail order bride from virtually any country in the world if you look hard enough. However, historically, there have been a few regions that have been especially popular with Western gentlemen looking for a beautiful, devoted, family-oriented, and easy-going wife. Here are the top three regions to consider if you want to marry a foreign bride, complete with the exact number of brides that have moved from those regions to the US in the past year.
Asia
In 2019, there were 15,386 Asian women who officially immigrated to the United States as brides to American men. There are many reasons why Asian mail order brides are so popular among Western gentlemen, and it’s worth noting that Asian ladies were the ones who started the whole mail order bride craze of the 20th century. Let’s look at the top 5 of Asian countries by their number of mail order wives:
- The Philippines—7,134.
- Vietnam—1,782.
- China—1,135.
- Thailand—855.
- India—789.
TOP 3 dating websites to meet Asian soulmate rated by popularity
Rank | Dating Website | Editorial`s Notes | Cost, $ |
? | CuteAsianWoman | Best website to find Asian women for marriage | from $3.99 |
? | TheLuckyDate | Ideal dating platform to meet Asian singles online | from $2.99 |
? | EasternHoneys | One of the best dating sites to find Asian ladies for serious relationship | from $2.99 |
READ ALSO: Korean Brides: Where to Find Korean Women for Marriage?
Latin America
Latin America is a unique region from a dating perspective, there are a lot of Latin dating websites. On one hand, it’s very close to the US and there are lots of Latino people living in America, so you may think you already know them well. On the other hand, a Latina mail order wife is still a pretty exotic creature it can take you years to fully understand. The top 5 of Latin American countries where men went to look for a mail order wife in 2019 looks like this:
- Mexico—1,676.
- Dominican Republic—1,270.
- Brazil—1,065.
- Colombia—1,014.
- Haiti—687.
TOP 3 dating websites to meet Latina women for serious relationships rated by popularity
Rank | Dating Website | Editorial`s Notes | Cost, $ |
? | LaDate | Ideal dating platform to meet Latin women for serious relationship | from $2.99 |
? | ColombiaLady | One of the best websites to find Latin singles | from $3.99 |
? | LoveFort | The perfect dating site to connect with passionate Latin women | from $2.99 |
READ ALSO: Latin Brides: How to Find a Latin Woman for Marriage?
Europe
Europe is an incredibly diverse continent where every region is unlike each other, and so are its mail order brides. Without a doubt, when it comes to meeting mail order brides, Eastern Europe takes the cake. It’s home to some of Europe’s most traditional women who understand what matters the most in life and don’t waste time on meaningless things. Here are the top 5 destinations in Europe by the number of successful mail order wife marriages:
- Ukraine—860.
- Russia—815.
- Germany—364.
- Armenia—251.
- France—220.
TOP 3 dating websites to meet Slavic women for serious relationship rated by popularity
Rank | Dating Website | Editorial`s Notes | Cost, $ |
? | BravoDate | Ideal dating platform to find future life partner from Ukraine | from $2.99 |
? | UkraineBride4you | Perfect match to meet Ukrainian and Russian singles | from $3.99 |
? | TheLuckyDate | One of the best dating platform to date women from European countries online | from $2.99 |
READ ALSO: Ukrainian Brides: Where to Find Ukrainian Wives?
The cost of online dating
The internet dating industry is one of the best things to come out of the rapid growth of the online realm. For millions of people around the world, a dating site has become one of the only ways to connect with other people and get a chance to find a girlfriend, wife, partner, or lover. International dating, as part of the dating industry, has also grown significantly over the past two decades. Let’s look in detail at how much it costs to be an active dating service user.
How much do Americans spend on online dating?
Internet dating is an industry that has shown steady growth ever since it first became known in the 1990s. Only over the past five years since 2017, Americans have gone from spending 390 million to 674 million on online dating per year, and by 2024, this number is expected to almost double compared to 2017.
The majority of dating sites don’t charge you just for signing up. They allow you to create your account and take a look around. Then, when you find several faces you don’t mind getting to know closer, you face the fact that you cannot contact them without paying for your experience in one way or another. But why do popular mail order bride sites make their users pay, other than for the obvious reason that they need to make money?
Why they pay?
If you have ever been to a completely free dating service—and there have been plenty of those over the years—you have probably seen that those services are not an ideal place to meet people. They are rife with fake profiles, scammers, vulgar language, disruptive behavior, and other things you don’t really want to see when you are searching for your significant other.
Making members pay to communicate with other members is a way for those services to ensure a more comfortable and safe dating environment for everyone involved. You will soon notice that while male members of dating services typically have to pay, the services are available for free to mail order brides. This is not a coincidence, as women are far less likely to engage in this kind of behavior and generally take their dating experience more seriously. Here is how much you will potentially pay for your dating journey.
Membership vs. credits
On the majority of the best mail order bride platforms, you will face one of the two types of payment options: membership and credits. A membership typically includes some or all of the essential features you need when communicating with mail order brides, and there are usually several types of membership available:
- A Standard membership, which is sometimes free or costs a few dollars, includes only the basic features, such as full access to member profiles and an opportunity to exchange messages. In some cases, messaging is not included and you need to pay extra for this feature; more on that later in our article.
- A Gold membership typically includes most of the functionality you need for a successful internet dating experience. You can message the mail order brides, exchange photos and videos with them, spice up your messages with stickers, and get timely customer support. A Gold membership usually costs between $10 and $30, but some mail order bride websites charge upwards of $50 per month.
- A Premium membership, which is sometimes called Diamond membership, is the highest level of membership you can get on a dating site. It includes every feature that is available on the service. Premium members can get priority customer support care and often get an opportunity to highlight their profile with special badges or boost it to make it appear higher in the search results.
Some dating agencies don’t have any membership options at all. They allow every member to sign up and browse the site for free and only pay for the features he is using. In that case, everything from the messaging to the chat stickers is going to cost you a certain amount of money. The payment on these sites is usually done with the help of credits, which are available in several packages. Typically, the more credits you buy at once, the cheaper each credit is going to be.
It’s impossible to calculate the average price of each credit because each mail order bride website has its own rates. On some mail order brides websites, you can get 2 credits for over $15, and elsewhere, 10 credits cost $10. So before you join an international dating service and decide to stick around on it for a long time, make sure to compare the prices and decide if you are fine with the proposed rates.
Types of upgrades on dating sites
Whether you are using a site with a paid membership option or a mail order bride service where you need to pay for each message you send, there are usually some features that are not included in any plan and you need to pay extra for. However, they can really make a difference in your internet dating experience and get you to your end goal faster. Here are the three most popular paid features offered by the best international dating sites:
- Video chat. This feature is usually far more expensive than text chats or emails, but it is the closest thing you can get to real-life dating when you don’t have an opportunity to spend time in the same room yet.
- Virtual gifts. When you are just getting to know the beautiful foreign mail order brides, you should know that the most attractive ones get lots of attention from men. This is why you need something to help you stand out, and sending cute virtual gifts can be an easy way to do it.
- Gift delivery. An average mail order bride site understands that you don’t have as many opportunities to impress the woman when you’re thousands of miles away. This is why a typical dating agency has a gift delivery feature, where you can spend money on flowers or a gift and have it delivered directly to your bride’s apartment.
The one step needed to make your marriage to a mail order bride legal
Since the United States is one of the countries with the highest number of foreign mail order brides moving into the country every year, it’s not at all surprising that the US also has one of the most developed legal systems for helping those brides make the immigration process legal. As an American man trying to get a foreign wife, you will need to get a special kind of visa for her. However, before you can get the visa and bring your bride into your country, there is one more step you need to take.
In order to obtain the visa and make your union fully legal in the eyes of American law, you need to prove that you and your bride have met each other in person at least once before applying for the visa. And since the budget of your bride probably cannot be compared to your own, the groom is typically the one who takes this potentially life-changing trip. Right now, we will break down the cost of meeting your future wife.
Visiting your bride to be in her home country: the typical budget
Once you’ve spent some time communicating online and you have decided that you’ve met the woman you want to marry, comes the next important step: meeting in real life and strengthening your connection. The travel part of your mail order brides pricing will consist of a few typical expenses and will depend on your destination, where exactly you are going, whether you are going to get gifts for your wife’s family, and some other factors.
As a husband-to-be, you want to know what kind of mail order brides pricing you are going to face when visiting your future wife in her home country. To give you a better example of the possible budget, we will list the average cost of visiting three of the most popular mail order bride destinations. For obvious reasons, we cannot give you exact numbers, but these are a good place to start calculating your budget. All calculations are for a 14-day stay in the city of your choice.
The Philippines
The Philippines are not the most expensive country in Asia, so if you fall in love with an Asian mail order bride, you shouldn’t worry that a visit to her country will cost you more than you can afford. However, you should take into account the fact that you will be paying for food, transportation, and entertainment for two even though you are going to travel on your own.
- Flight tickets: $1,500
- Hotel room: $700
- Food: $500
- Transportation: $300
- Entertainment: $400
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Mexico
If you live in the US, Mexico is one of the most affordable countries for you to visit in terms of ticket and accommodation prices. Sure, the more popular your target Mexican region is with tourists, the higher the cost is going to be, but it’s all worth it when you’ve got marriage to a beautiful Mexican lady on your mind.
- Flight tickets: $400
- Hotel room: $1,000
- Food: $700
- Transportation: $300
- Entertainment: $500
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Russia
Russia is a somewhat mysterious destination for Western travelers, and the average cost of visiting Russia very much depends on where you are going. Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi are on the same level as the biggest American cities in terms of accommodation and entertainment prices, while smaller cities are much more budget-friendly. Here are Russian dating websites to meet single women for serious relationships.
- Flight tickets: $900
- Hotel room: $800
- Food: $500
- Transportation: $200
- Entertainment: $400
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Like most men from Western countries, you are probably familiar with more than one dating site for local dating. However, such a site may not prove to be particularly effective when you are looking for a foreign woman to marry. You may need a site designed specifically for international dating.
These sites typically offer more services for long-distance dating than a regular dating platform: for example, you can send letters, and not just chat with the girls, because of the possible time difference. Moreover, since not every foreign woman can speak English on a level that is good enough for effective communication, sites often offer translation services. Obviously, these extra services are usually paid, but they also increase your chances of finding the right woman.
Bringing your mail order wife to the US: the average cost
The most popular way to bring a mail order bride to the United States to marry her is to get a K-1 visa for her. And while it’s definitely not the most expensive component of the average cost of getting a foreign mail order bride, it’s something you need to account for when calculating the mail order bride pricing.
The K-1 visa was designed specifically for foreign fiancés of American citizens, which is why it’s also known as the fiancé visa. With this visa, an engaged couple, consisting of a US citizen and a foreign woman, can reunite in the US and get married legally within 90 days. The woman can then apply for a green card and get permanent status in the United States. These are the steps that mail order brides and their US fiancés need to take to legally get married in the US:
- The US citizen files Form I-129F to indicate the couple’s decision to get married and to kickstart the background check process. At this point, the couple will need to supply proof of an existing relationship.
- The foreign fiancé files Form DS-160 at the US embassy. At this stage, the fiancé will also need to complete a medical examination and sit through an interview at an embassy.
- Typically, the decision is made on the day of the interview or shortly afterwards. The fiancé, who is granted a K-1 visa, will need to marry her US visa sponsor in 90 days upon arrival or leave the country right away.
The process of obtaining a K-1 visa can take up to 8-10 months in total and can cost up to $1,000. The cost of mail order visa can increase even more if you work with an immigration lawyer.
The average mail order brides cost by region
The total cost of mail order bride depends on multiple factors, including:
- How much time you spend on dating platforms
- How many paid mail order bride services you use
- How many gifts you give to her and your future in-laws
- Whether you give money to her directly
- How many times you meet each other in person
The exact numbers also depend on the country that your bride comes from. For example, while a 1-year paid internet dating experience can cost you from $500 to $2,000, a 14-day trip to Mexico, Russia, or the Philippines can increase your mail order bride cost by $2,900, $2,800, or $3,400 respectively.
Activities | Russia | Mexico | Philippines |
Flight tickets | $900 | $400 | $1500 |
Hotel room | $800 | $1000 | $700 |
Food | $500 | $700 | $500 |
Transportation | $200 | $300 | $300 |
Entertainment | $400 | $500 | $400 |
Total | $2800 | $2900 | $3400 |
Romance tours: are they a good way to get a foreign wife?
As an American man who has never set foot in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asian countries, or other popular destinations for getting a foreign wife, you may think that this endeavor is a too serious one to take on your own. If you also don’t have a lot of experience with internet dating and are not afraid of increased travel expenses, you may consider an alternative to looking for a mail order bride on your own, which is a romance tour.
A romance tour is typically arranged by a dating agency in the country where there are many mail order wives. In most cases, you won’t be the only guest on the tour: the agencies will invite between 5 and 20 men on the same tour and significantly more single, attractive women looking for a foreign husband, so that everyone has a fair chance of finding a partner.
The average cost of a romance tour is between $5,000 and $12,000. It includes everything from flight tickets and visa expenses to the cost of planning a date with your future foreign girlfriend. The agency will assist you with every aspect of planning your trip, including getting a visa, and will supply you with a translator to help you and the woman, who may not speak English on the desired level, overcome a possible language barrier.
Romance tours have a lot of advantages for those men who have bigger financial capabilities and want to minimize their own efforts in the task of searching for a wife. They also have certain disadvantages. Most importantly, during a romance tour, you are presented with a limited number of potential brides, whereas internet dating gives you an opportunity to find a wife that has every feature you are looking for. Another downside of a romance tour is the competition between men, which can often get toxic and makes some guys resort to desperate measures to win.
The truth about mail order bride cost
The cost of mail order bride is one of the most important and most discussed parameters of the search for a foreign partner. It’s important to talk about one aspect of the mail order bride cost.
When we are talking about the mail order bride price, we are only talking about the total budget of looking for a mail order bride. We don’t mean that there is a literal mail order bride price that you can pay to get a bride delivered to your home country by some agency.
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This bride price may include dating site expenses, travel expenses, and other expenses. The mail order bride pricing is highly dependable on multiple factors and there aren’t two Western men who will pay the same mail order bride price even if their romantic journey is very similar. This is why you will hardly ever find exact answers to questions like “How much are Russian mail order brides?” or “How much does a mail order bride from China cost?”—even if you do find some figures, your own experience may be different.
READ MORE: What is a Mail Order Bride Price?
Bride price vs. mail order bride price
When discussing the mail order bride price, some people simply shorten it to the bride price. However, these are two different phrases that have two completely different meanings. So what is bride price and how is it different from mailorder brides cost?
The bride price is a concept that dates back at least to the Middle Ages wedding traditions, although there are opinions that bride price has existed long before that. Bride price is the amount of money the groom pays to the family of the bride he wants to marry or to the bride herself.
Naturally, if you’ve lived your whole life in the Western world, you may not have heard about this tradition, but it’s still alive and well in many cultures around the planet. Even now, there are probably thousands of men preparing for their wedding elsewhere in the world and gathering their bride price to please the bride’s parents.
The bride price custom has a lot of historical significance, but it also gets some criticism. For example, it has often been used as a form of payment for customary marriages where the woman didn’t have much say in the decision to get married. This was especially common in African culture, where the bride price was often very high and involved not only money, but also goods and even food products and drinks.
These days, the bride price tradition is less common than it was in the very beginning. Still, there are dozens of cultures in the world where the bride’s family expects something from the groom in time for the wedding in return for giving out their daughter for marriage.
This tradition is especially strong in countries where a customary marriage is still common. The reward for the bride’s family can range from a few cattle items and symbolic gifts in Africa to around $300,000 in Thailand for a highly-educated bride from a respected family or a bride who has won a prestigious beauty pageant.
To sum up
The two important takeaways from this guide are: the cost of mail order marriages is not a constant because it depends on so many factors, but with the help of trusted sources and if you have some time on your hands, you can get a pretty good idea of the mail order bride cost you are going to pay. And no matter what your mail order brides cost will amount to in the end, you will know it’s all worth it because you get an amazing mail order wife as a result.
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