Amish Dating: Are Marriages Arranged?

A viewer recently asked if Amish marriages are arranged on the Amish America YouTube channel. And the answer to that is a definitive “no”.

Odds are you already knew the answer to this one. But I can kind of see where the question might come from – when looking at this religious society, which certainly must appear “strict” to some, from the outside.

The question has a bit of an urban legend feel, but is worth answering. Some religious and cultural groups do and have practiced arranged marriage, after all.

The Amish are not one of them, however. Amish young people can and do freely choose who they wish to marry.

However, just as in most other societies, Amish parents of course have feelings on the matter as well.

And of course, they’ll have ideas on who might be good people in the community for their children as a potential future spouse. They may favor someone in community for their son or daughter to marry. That’s only natural.

Where Amish find their future husbands & wives

The main arena where Amish young people will find their future husband or wife would be the youth group, especially in the larger communities.

In a place like Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, or Holmes County, Ohio, Amish youth will decide which youth group they wish to join. It’s common that you’ll find someone within that youth group.

Image: Don Shenk

And the youth groups will meet after church on Sundays. You’ll play volleyball, you’ll have dinner, and then you’ll have a singing.

And then after that is when dating happens. The typical first date is an Amish young man would ask an Amish young woman to give her a ride home in his buggy (and of course, as with other things, Amish dating practices can vary).

What about casual dating?

The Amish emphasize dating and courtship to be for the purpose of marriage. So casual dating is not something the Amish really promote.

The idea there is that dating – a “special friend” relationship – should be entered into with the idea of potentially leading to marriage. That should be something in the minds of the young people when they are entering into those relationships.

Image: Jim Halverson

But is that always the case?

Of course, it’s not always the case. People are people, humans are humans, but that’s the ideal there.

Do Amish date more than one person before marrying?

And just because you are dating someone as an Amish person, that doesn’t mean that first person you date is the one that you’re going to marry. Amish friends of mine dated other people before they got married. It’s not uncommon.

Sometimes something just doesn’t work out – just like with non-Amish people. That’s the purpose of dating, after all.

If these marriages were arranged, then there wouldn’t be any outcome like that. It would simply be chosen and decided.

There would be no point to dating really, in the sense of seeing if this is someone who would make a good future life partner for you – if this could be someone I could have a family with.

You also go into it with the assumption that you’re probably going to join the church as well. That’s because to be married in the Amish church, both sides need to be baptized.

Dating challenges for Amish in small communities

Now, if you’re living in a smaller Amish community, you may very well need to travel some. To visit other communities, larger communities, essentially in pursuit of finding a marriage partner.

And there are a lot of very small Amish communities – hundreds, in fact. So for a young person, the choice of who you might marry there is quite limited.

So that is something you also see – young people going and spending time in other communities, larger communities, or communities their church maybe has some relationship with, also known as “being in fellowship” with.

Photo: Don Shenk

Those Amish churches would have a lot of similarities in terms of their church standards, how conservative or progressive they are, and so on.

Can more progressive Amish marry into a more conservative church?

Another question I’ve gotten recently is, can you marry from, let’s say, a more conservative church into a more progressive church? And vice-versa?

And the answer is yes, you can do that. And that happens. Of course, the person who would move to the new church, and would join that church, would adopt the rules and standards of that church – whether that’s a more progressive move or a more conservative move.

Occasionally, you’ll see a traditional Lancaster County Amish surname in a Midwestern Amish settlement, in a place like northern Indiana or Holmes County, Ohio, for instance.

Most of those names tend to be distinct to the Lancaster Amish group. And so that’s usually a giveaway that you have a connection between those two larger communities.

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One Comment

  1. Judy Pasqualone

    Arranged marriages

    Thanks for this video. You explained it very well.