A Thai marriage involves much more than the wedding itself: it requires managing a specific visa category, adjusting to family expectations very different from Western ones, and often supporting the wife's family financially. The stories under this tag show that less romantic, more practical side of building a life together across two cultures, with all the patience and misunderstandings that come with it. You'll find accounts of couples married for years who are still learning to live with the differences, alongside others who are just starting out on that path. For the specific moment of the wedding itself, with its rituals and Buddhist ceremony, see our Wedding in Thailand guide.
A divorce sent me to Pattaya on holiday with my brother. There I met Nat, a single mother who'd lost her partner before her daughter was born. I fell in love, started doing bike deliveries at night to support her, and months later proposed at Bangkok airport. We've been married four years now in London.
Graham, a 51-year-old Scot, first came to Thailand at 32, on holiday after a long breakup. In the bars of Koh Samui he met Dao, the woman he'd later marry. Nineteen years, a Thai wedding, and a house built in Isaan later, he lives surrounded by her family and wouldn't change a thing.
In 2005, heartbroken and with a student loan installment just paid out, I spent a week in Bangkok trying to drink the pain away. I went back nine more times in my early twenties. On one of those trips, in Koh Samui, I met the woman I now live with in England, and with whom I have two daughters.
A Canadian sailor has been married nine years to a woman from Pattaya and has three kids. Now he faces the hardest question of his life: stay or leave.