Christmas, as anyone on social media will be painfully aware, is peak engagement time. It’s only a matter of hours before the grinning “I put a ring on it” diamond selfies start, if indeed they haven’t been cluttering up your news feed already.

Which is why I want to use this romantic season of goodwill to address one of the more hideous aspects of engagement etiquette: asking the bride’s dad for her hand in marriage.

In truth, there are many traditions surrounding marriage that make me feel queasy, but none is so medieval as that of a man asking a woman’s father for permission before proposing.

It’s bad enough that – even if you have the Worst Dad Ever, who ran off when you were a baby and never paid child support – you still can’t put your mother’s name on your marriage certificate, but asking a father’s permission smacks of that proprietorial phenomenon I always think of as “creepy, possessive dad”.



You know creepy, possessive dad. He puts “Daddy’s little girl” slogan T-shirts on his toddler (or worse, the babygrows that read: “Daddy says I’m not allowed to date, ever”). Later, when she’s a teenager, he threatens her various boyfriends with physical violence if they go so far as to “hurt my little princess”. Basically, he’s Donald Trump, sitting on a chatshow couch and declaring that “if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her” – as though that were a okay thing for anyone to say about their genetic offspring.



As far as I’m concerned, a father should keep his distance from his daughter’s romantic relationships unless her physical or emotional welfare is seriously at stake. Polite disinterest is the order of the day. It also means not behaving as though you are the proverbial gatekeeper to her vagina and, when it comes to marriage, performing the role of all-powerful overlord of her future happiness.

I don’t know if it’s because the relationship I have with my dad is more chummy than most father-daughter relationships (he’s more of a smoking buddy than a patriarch), but the idea of a man asking my feminist dad for my hand in marriage makes me want to lie down on the floor. I also doubt my father would react well. If anything, it would be a warning sign. I imagine he would be tempted to withdraw permission on the very basis of the guy asking. Except he wouldn’t be able to, because he doesn’t own me.



Asking a father’s permission doesn’t make sense any more. More than likely, his daughter no longer lives under his roof and is already shacked up with her husband-to-be. She may be marrying later in life, or on her second marriage, with too much life experience already under her belt to need (or want) the green light from her father. Or she may just find the whole grovelling performance a tad weedy.

If you really are a couple keen on tradition, then perhaps asking for both parents’ “blessing” is a more modern way to approach the issue. Everyone likes to feel as though their family will welcome this new addition enthusiastically. I once saw a lovely wedding ceremony in which the bride was walked down the aisle by her father, and the groom by his mother. This transformed that particular tradition from something that resembles a property transaction to an emotional moment, where each parent’s role in their respective children’s upbringing was acknowledged. Similarly, having a chat with both parents shifts the focus from “bride as chattel” on to the family that you are about to join.

In addition, the “blessing” route does allow you to sniff out whether any of your proposal plans have the potential to bomb spectacularly. Personally, I am not a fan of having major life decisions sprung on me without warning, and I know many people feel the same. Having a talk with your partner’s parents beforehand could, for instance, prevent you from embarking on an enormous, ill-advised public proposal, saved by a last-minute call to your future best man (“Mate, it’s me. Cancel the barbershop quartet! Turns out Tina hates Let Me Call You Sweetheart. It’s back to basics, pal”), or buying her a blood diamond when she wants an ethically sourced emerald.



Ultimately, I think that my issue with the permission-asking doesn’t just come down to the fact that it’s an outdated sexist convention rooted in a time when women were regarded as property, but also the subterfuge of having the person you trust most in the world speaking to your father about your future relationship before talking to you.

It plays into the societal pressure to have a surprise proposal. “It was so unexpected!!” the newly engaged acquaintance will squeal, fluttering her fingers so her diamond catches the light. Bullshit. Everyone knows that this engagement has come about following 17 months of ongoing late-night discussions ending in tears and recriminations. Or at least, you know, a friendly chat about it. Because why should your dad decide when you are ready? Why should anyone but the both of you, together? We live in modern times, so we had better start acting that way.