Learning Journal 10: Marriage

First, I should tell you that while I was reading the article that I found about marriage in Tonga, I was able to practice keeping an open mind about their culture and not using my frame of reference to describe it.  For example,  in Tonga, it's not uncommon for a father to be supportive of young men making sexual innuendos or talking about her in a sexual way in front of the father.  He actually supports it and is proud that his daughther is desirable. I had never really heard anything like that before, and it really made me think about how different that culture is compared to what I know.  But that doesn't make it wrong, just because it's not what I do or what I would encourage (or allow!) my husband to do.  There were many examples like that in the article I read about marriage. 
I was really interested to find out how many people elope instead of having ceremonial weddings first.