How Much Does a Mail Order Bride Cost? – Everything About Mail Brides Prices In 2024

That is a good question and there are no simple answers, but this is the internet and you want a simple answer, so here you go…

If you’re determined to find a mail order bride for yourself—make sure you’re aware of the costs. Buying a mail order bride is a complex process that takes time and money (and never means buying a real human being). Let me show you what precisely the total mail bride cost consists of, how to reduce the ripoff check, and how to make your mail-order experience smooth and decent. Take a look at this vertical of mail order bride websites with the highest rates globally—in our opinion, those are the ideal ones for your smooth first experience:

Best International Dating Sites

SofiaDate

Over 487K users

i

57% men

|

43% women

Our Score

5.0

Visit Site

SakuraDate

Over 0 users

i

61% men

|

39% women

Our Score

5.0

Visit Site

LatiDate

Over 0 users

i

48% men

|

52% women

Our Score

5.0

Visit Site

LaDate

Over 1.5M users

i

50% men

|

50% women

Our Score

4.9

Visit Site

The dating website will put its weight on the total cost, you surely would want to choose the one reasonably priced. That’s why I suggest you take a look at this list of tested mail order online agencies before you go. Let’s make the mail bride cost clear for you, scroll down and scan through the article! Make sure you jot down the essential takeaways from this piece

Who is a mail order bride?

The mail order bride price is not a grand total check—not a piece of paper with a stated cost; instead, expect a complex deal that depends on multiple things: the mail order agency you’ve chosen, your preferences, and your budget.

Where did mail order brides come from?

If you wonder how this industry is still allowed, you have to know that the mail order bride is a title left over from the early days of International Dating. Back in the days before the internet, communication between Western men and foreign women was very cumbersome, so much so that many men would just find a girl in a catalog—technically, buy a mail order wife—and bring her to the USA before really getting to know her.

Cute girls are waiting for you!

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Popular mail order brides countries

The selection of countries with foreign mail order brides is truly impressive, including the ones you’ve never heard of in your Geography class. Still, there are some destinations where you have a better chance to meet potential mail order wives, mainly because more women there are interested in meeting American Joes instead of local machos. If you’re looking for the most popular bride’s country, consider the following options.

Average mail order bride prices contains of:

Mail order bride pricing greatly depends on the country and the preferences of the lady, but several key components make the backbone of every mail order bride cost. All the following information comes from painstaiking research of user experience and interviewing couples with mail order brides on their pre- and post-marriage expenses. After reading this, you’ll get a much better grasp on the mail order brides cost. There are essentially five types of mail order bride prices associated with pursuing a mail order bride. Each of the points will be covered in greater detail in the text below:

1. Mail order brides agency fees: In fact, it’s the cost of mail order bride database that each agency maintains, as well as the price of using its communication features for, you know, actually getting somewhere with the women there.
2. Travel Expenses: Airfare, hotel, and taxi services can add up in a hurry if you are not careful.
3. Translators/Guides/Drivers: Most men will need some of these personal services in Ukraine, Colombia, or Thailand.
4. Bureaucratic Charges: Charges for visas and passports are basically fairly cheap, but if something is amiss and you have to hire an immigration lawyer it can be expensive.
5. Assimilation Expenses: This is probably the most overlooked expense.  It is going to take your new wife time to assimilate into your community and it is often more expensive than men expect.

How much does it cost for a mail order bride? As usual, women are on the receiving end and don’t pay much, if at all. It’s typically free to set up a female account on mail order bride sites, and men pay for communicating with them and gifts. The biggest expense for a woman would be a photoshoot if she’s a perfectionist and wants really nice profile pictures. 

Agency Fees

Your mail order bride journey begins with a mail order website—a resource where you can simply get a woman from the foreign country you appeal to. Websites are split into those where you pay per service (using credits) and those with a premium membership plan that is charged per month. On these websites, some features, like sign-up, search tools, and profile browsing, are free. The mail order bride costs you should be ready for come from using premium services, including online communication, the ability to send gifts, and translation services too. This is how you get the woman and the agency’s employees get to feed their families. 

What should you know about online mail order bride pricing there? The majority of mail order brides websites have a credit system and sell them in packages. The prices range from $2.99 per 20 credits up to a few hundred dollars for 750 credits. Naturally, it’s cheaper to buy them in bulk after you test the features you need and make sure they work for you. You’ll be spending your credits to flirt and impress women with how cool you are. Take a look at this possible list of fun activities:

Some mail order sites have a different pricing policy with credits. You can get only 2 credits for $3.99 or order 100 credits for $399, but there you’ll get 5 minutes of chat for 0.5 credit and a letter for 1 credit. These online dating sites also suggest more diverse communication tools like calls and video chat. Which system should you choose? Well, you must know your priorities to know the answer. Thankfully, the market is saturated enough to cater to everyone’s needs and pocket.  

Unless you are totally obsessed with finding a woman and spend all your time chatting, a month of active membership on an average mail order bride website may cost several hundred dollars. This mail order bride pricing may be higher than you expected when opening this article. After all, many mainstream dating apps and websites are free to use despite pushing their premium plans down your throat. However, mail order brides services give you full control of your online dating expenses since you can use paid dating features only when you really need them. Besides that, such websites give a line of more significant perks:

Travel Expenses

Travel expenses are probably the most worrisome mail order brides pricing element for most men since you must organize the trip yourself. International travel is just outside of their comfort zone for many men from East Tennessee and Iowa. So, they worry that they will get ripped off on hotel rates, restaurant bills, and taxis. For the most part, these fears are blown all out of proportion.

Transportation

The first thing you should consider for your trip is flight tickets. If you travel to Latin countries from the south of the US, their cost won’t exceed $500. However, a cross-Atlantic round-trip ticket to western Europe or Asia starts from $1,000 and may reach $5,000, depending on the class. Remember that not all countries and cities have direct flights from your current location, so you may need to buy several tickets and take money for extra meals too. This is why prices of mail order brides aren’t necessarily lower in small towns.

Accommodation

The need for decent accommodation seems to have a big impact on how much is a mail order bride, but don’t you worry! In fact, travel expenses are often much cheaper compared to traveling domestically. Currently, it is possible to get a five-star hotel room in Ukraine on Booking.com for about the same price as a Hampton Inn in the United States, and on Airbnb, it is possible to find private rooms for about $10 a night. However, be careful with the choice of the city you go to since not all of them guarantee safety at the moment. Right now, Ukraine is a terrific deal. Still, prices in Colombia, Thailand, the Philippines, Costa Rica, and Peru are just a fraction of what you would pay in Europe, the United States, or Australia. Russia used to be a great destination for wife hunting, but now it’s getting almost impossible for a foreigner to get there, so its awesome low price of mail order brides doesn’t matter anymore. 

Meals

Food is another item you can easily save a fortune on. If you want to eat like a native, it is not hard to eat at $5.00 a day in any romantic tourist destination. I am not saying that you will love a daily diet of rice and boiled fish in Asia or borsch and potatoes in Eastern Europe, but you can find extremely cheap food. If you want to eat “Western Food” in Asia, you can probably do that for about one-half of what you would pay in restaurants in the United States or Europe. And, right now, Ukraine is foodie heaven. The quality of the high-end restaurants in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, or the other big cities stands up very well with the best restaurants in the world, and the prices are incredible, often only 20% of what you might pay in Los Angeles, New York, or Sydney. Check out TripAdvisor’s best restaurants in Kyiv, and you will realize you can eat amazingly well for what you would pay to eat at Denny’s in Oklahoma.

Moving around

Even dealing with foreign taxi drivers has become cheaper and easier. No one wants to start a trip with someone you don’t know by haggling over a few dollars, but today Uber, Lyft, or the Asian knockoff Grab are ubiquitous. That means there is no haggling, and you know exactly what you owe before you step into the car.

Entertainment

Most Eastern European and Latin countries have reasonable prices for weekend trips, museums, and performances. Of course, western European countries have similar to US prices, so a ticket to an opera house may reach $50 and more for both of you. If you decide to have the same leisure time in Ukraine or Russia, it’ll be only $10, which accounts for the cheapest mail order brides. Asian countries have a great difference in the financial aspect of having fun. It’ll be much cheaper to take an Asian woman to the cinema in Thailand and the Philippines, but offline dating in Japan or South Korea isn’t that affordable.

So, if you are a Western man with a middle-class income, travel expenses should not be a reason for you not to pursue a mail order bride. Despite what you might’ve heard, the average cost of mail order brides in the most popular countries is quite reasonable, so you are very likely to pull this off with enough dedication and openness to trying new things. Also, note the impressive range of prices. Now you know why asking how much is a mail order bride won’t get you a simple answer. The price of mail order brides may vary due to numerous factors and personal preferences.

Consider A Romance Tour

If you want to avoid all these calculations of the average mail order brides pricing and have everything prepared for you by a dating agency, romance tours are the best way for most Western men to meet a mail order bride. They help with all the annoying hassles of travel so you can focus on impressing a beautiful young woman. Most importantly, they keep prices of mail order brides reasonable.

For most guys visiting our site, mail-order brides are a totally new concept they know little or nothing about. So, they tend to spend a little here and a little there investigating different agencies, different parts of the world and communicating with different women to educate themselves.

You can learn more on their Romance Tour Page if that looks pretty great. Also, click around and look at some of the women’s profiles. Besides the public photos, most ladies have private photos you can see for free if you go ahead and register, which takes less than a minute.

A romance tour starts on a given date, and for some guys, that deadline really helps speed up the process because you are not just communicating with the idea that “one day” you will visit. You will save on your food, hotel, and in-country travel if you take a romance tour instead of traveling alone. Again, this can add up in a hurry. So, on a two-week tour, you can save another $1400.

If you need a translator and driver for private dates, the tour companies will help you get qualified professionals at a much lower rate than you can get on your own. If you do four individual dates over two weeks, that is another $200.

So, that is my first suggestion to save money. Just take an A Foreign Affair romance tour. Then you know precisely what you are spending, at least to get to the point of actually meeting the woman. If you still want to do it yourself, the costs are harder to figure out in advance.

Translators/Guides/Drives

Traveling to meet a foreign woman differs from just traveling. You are journeying around the world to pursue a goal that might just change your life forever, and there are some specialized expenses you will have to pursue.

A translator can help you make a good impression on a first date, but translators are expensive. Most of the time, a girl will try to get you to use a translator hired through the agency that represents her. If you do, the rate will be about $20 to $25 an hour, but in more developed countries, it may grow to $50 – $60 per hour. In Ukraine, an hour of a professional translator’s work is $35, while in the Czech Republic, a translator will cost you starting from $15 per hour. Thailand prices for the same services cost $33 per hour, while such Latin countries as Mexico or Colombia will be much cheaper—only $8-10 per hour.

For second dates, you can talk with women asking for the help of independent translation agencies, and you will probably pay $15 an hour or so. The translators at Go2UA get great reviews.You also might want to hire a driver because street signs are optional in many of these countries, and renting a car can be a hassle. However, not all drivers know foreign languages, which may cause its own share of road movie comedy. Moreover, the cost of taxis differs from country to country. In Ukraine, 1 mile of driving costs around $2 plus ordering a taxi starts from $12. In Thailand, you can save since a 10-mile trip will cost you only $2.5, while a taxi service in Colombia is estimated at less than $2 for the same distance. Always check for Uber or its competitor Bolt when in a new city for more reliable and transparent transportation services.

Bureaucratic Charges

If you’re a man who joins a dating platform with cheap mail order brides, don’t forget that mail order brides prices aren’t just wooing and romantic trips. They also include some boring but, alas, necessary things like:

Other things you may need to spend money on are wedding expenses and several more things like K-1 visa and relocation costs. You may be able to cut corners with some of these by ordering a simple ceremony instead of having a reception for your whole town to keep up with the Joneses. Others, like getting a visa, are non-negotiable, so you must be smart with this to avoid debt.  

The most considerable bureaucratic expense occurs if you marry a mail order bride and bring her back to your home country. For a United States citizen, the experts at RapidVisa believe that “…the typical case can range from $1,200 to $5,000 including government fees, medical exam, assistance and miscellaneous.”So, that is pretty steep, but you also have the choice to marry the woman in her home country and then bring her back to the United States. That is a little less expensive and costs between $800 and $2,025, but of course, either of these approaches only really gets expensive when you have to hire an immigration attorney. An immigration attorney will start at about $300 an hour and go up, up, up. After filing Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancé, it may take approximately 10 to 14 months to obtain a K-1 visa.

Assimilation Costs

The final cost that guys often overlook is the cost of assimilating your mail order bride into your community. Oh yes, bringing your new wife to your home isn’t the end of this journey, it’s only the beginning. Mind you, this may be the most important part of your family life, so don’t just shrug this off — this will define the happiness of your marriage. In sum, engaging in all the assimilation activities described here will cost you around $20,000.

Car

Do you have a car for your new wife? In most of the United States, she will need a car (from $10,000) and a cell phone (from $1,000). (If you think your wife does not need a cell phone and a car, please leave this page and go back to your cave.)

Home decor

You should let your wife have some real input into the decoration of your place. 

This is important!

Think about the situation for a moment. This beautiful young woman trusted you with her life. She came halfway around the world to a country that does not speak her native language because despite what her friends and parents might have told her, she believes you are a pretty amazing guy.

Now, you need to show her that she is the most important thing in the world to you, and one of the easiest ways to do it is to do a little redecorating of your house. You should be happy to buy some new furniture (and spend from $3,000) or do a little remodeling to make her feel it is her house too.

In the long run, this can be the best money you have ever spent on sticks and bricks, and honestly, do you really need to keep that flea-bitten moose head your granddad shot in 1939 over the kitchen table? And if you don’t have a moose head, you probably have high school football trophies, Star Wars posters, or pictures of your ex-wife up that need to go.

Pocket money

This is a great project for the two of you because she probably cannot work for the first year or so she is in the country. No matter how well-educated and professionally successful your new wife is, she will probably not be able to work for at least a year. Some of this is because she is probably going to need to work on her English, but also, most professionals will need to be recertified in their new country.

Education

There is some education costs. For instance, you might need to pay for English lessons even if her English was good enough for you during the courting process. Driving lessons are another expense for a lot of mail order brides since getting a driver’s license may cost from $20 to $1,000.

Clothes and goods for everyday use

Also, you will probably end up buying her clothes. More than likely, she will live in a significantly hotter or colder climate and need clothes to match. And more than likely, you will want to buy your sexy mail order bride a lot of cute clothes, so don’t forget to prepare a couple of thousand dollars for that as well.

The point is you want to help her assimilate and be happy. It is a struggle, and oddly there is not a lot of helpful information about this subject, but the website MultlingualLiving.com is a great source on these issues. You should give it a read before you bring your mail order bride home. It will probably save you money, and it will certainly save you a lot of hassles.

All of these expenses add up, so let’s try to dig into the average cost of a mail order bride from a different angle.

Cheapest Mail Order Brides

Typically, it goes this way: guys first look for free dating sites, get scammed, and then grudgingly decide to use reputable mail order brides while desperately trying to save money. And it’s perfectly natural since you don’t want to waste your hard-earned bucks on something as fickle as the favor of dating site users. Here are some tips on how to reduce the cost of mail order brides without loosing on all the fun:

For example, if you prefer chatting to video calls and giving flowers instead of jewelry, you may decrease your total mail order brides pricing by $500 and more.

If you decide to find a mail order bride online but choose the most affordable bride’s country for this purpose, check the following states with really good prices for wives. Typically, cheap mail order brides come from countries with low costs of living that aren’t far from the US.

Of course, an attractive mail order bride cost doesn’t mean your journey will be hassle-free. Things happen, and you can’t foresee them unless you’re a psychic. The woman you like may ask you for an iPhone instead of a box of chocolates, or her country may unexpectedly get rich overnight, making accommodation and food more expensive than in LA. Choosing the cheaper path may not work out for you or just end up more expensive than anticipated. Also, the cheapest mail order brides aren’t necessarily the most desperate for a man. But hey, you know your options now.

Average Cost of a Mail Order Bride

Determining the average cost of a mail order bride is difficult, but here we are going to consider the costs for an American man who is not willing to fly the worst airlines, stay in abysmal hotels, or eat SPAM the whole trip. But we also assume he is not going to stay at five-star hotels, fly first class, or eat Kobi beef and caviar the entire trip.

You just need to be able to budget that amount over your search, and most men probably spend from nine months to two years or so on their romantic quests.

One additional cost you need to remember is the ongoing expenses of having an extra person in your household. Because she is from overseas, those expenses will probably be higher. She will probably not bring a gigantic wardrobe, so that first year she will buy a lot of new clothes.

Eventually, perhaps your new wife will get a job and help with expenses, but you should probably plan to spend the same amount of time and money on the acclimation process as you did on the romance.

So, if it took you a year and $18,000, then you should assume it will take about the same amount of time and money for you and her to integrate into a working family fully.

For your convenience, here’s a table summarising the most important points about expenses and total costs of mail order brides.

As you can see, the cost of a mail order bride depends on many things, but it’s up to you to decide whether to pass all the stages of online and offline dating or skip some of them. 

Now that you know almost everything about a mail order brides cost and where to seek the cheapest mail order bride, it’s time to learn more about this industry, how it works, and what success rate there’s.

How to legally get a mail order bride

Best international dating sites are not only the most popular but also a legitimate way to meet a foreign woman for marriage. They represent adult women who willingly register with them and do not violate any laws. Thus, there’s nothing shady or gross about them. The majority of countries have adopted a legal regulation of this procedure. The US has the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) that lists strict rules for men willing to marry women from other countries with the help of international marriage brokers. There’s also a famous VAWA law that protects foreign brides if they become victims of domestic violence.

Canada recognizes marriages registered in other countries and offers overseas fiances a two-year probationary period before they get the official status of citizen. Therefore, it’s absolutely legal to look for brides abroad and bring them to your motherland for a happy married life.

Why is buying a mail order bride a good choice?

Today’s modern era rarely includes a person meeting another face to face and spending a long time in a relationship before marriage. A busy life and routine of entrepreneurs and serious men usually interfere with their chances of getting hitched and settling down, producing more and more single, unhappy males globally. And this is exactly where mail order brides come into play:

All of these qualities make them excellent mates. When considering this path to marriage, it is important to understand the costs associated with pursuing a foreign bride, before you meet that stunning young Ukrainian pediatrician or the beautiful Thai college student online.

For most reasonably successful Western men from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or Europe the expenses are reasonable with a little planning.

Pros and cons of mail order brides

People who try online dating but have only a vague idea of mail order wife platforms may not understand why men prefer mail brides to a mainstream dating platform and what pitfalls to expect entering this type of affair. The following pros and cons may shed some light on this confusion.

What are mail order bride websites?

Your mail order bride journey begins with a mail order website—a resource where you can simply get a woman from the foreign country you appeal to. Websites are split into those where you pay per service (using credits) and those with a premium membership plan that is charged per month.

Such websites give a line of significant perks:

Some mail order websites help you organize actual tours to the country where your bride’s from, or take care of real gifts delivery to the doorstep of your bride.

How to find a mail order bride

You could have already found out from this article that mail order wives can be discovered both online and offline. But what exactly should you do? If you have any questions or doubts, skim through these easy practical tips to eliminate any uncertainty about putting yourself out there online as well on romance tours.

If you prefer dating platforms, keep in mind the following things to achieve success:

When online dating isn’t your best bet, think of a mail order wife tour and do the following:

How to find mail order wife online

How to get a bride offline

Not everyone likes dating sites since some men need real-life interaction to fall in love. In this case, they need to choose between a romance tour and a self-made trip. In both cases, the procedure looks similar.

1. Select the destination you plan to visit. Learn more about mail order wives of different nationalities to see what you really want.
2. Order an all-inclusive trip or make all the necessary preparations yourself. Turn to an agency or buy tickets, book accommodation, and plan your route to make the most of this visit.
3. Get acquainted with girls. Only by doing so can you make the necessary arrangements for further development.
4. Invite the most attractive ones on real dates. You should feel whether any of these ladies can be your soulmate, and private communication can contribute to that.
5. Exchange contact information. If you like any girl and want to continue dating her at a distance, exchange contacts and let your romance flourish.

Mail Order Bride Specifications

There are NO specifications!

Mail order brides come in infinite shapes, sizes, and ages like all women. Human beings are complex and dynamic, especially in the context of a relationship, and that is an important distinction between products and people. No wonder dating sites offer an amazing selection of ladies where every person can find a perfect match no matter what expectations he has.

At the same time, men should remember that by getting international brides, they expose themselves to another culture. New customs, traditions, and even appearance may be a surprise! For example, Eastern European ladies tend to invest a lot in their beauty and look stylish anytime, so they can look outstanding among western ladies and even lead to cultural shock. They may also have different values and the idea of a perfect family, so trying to learn more about the nationality of your potential wife is a must.

Once the initial contact is made, many details have to be filled in, often with family assistance, but the element of independent choice remains strong.

Aspirant brides are told to be wary. So too, should be men who contact women, some of whom could be cruel. Or at least that is the myth that feminist professors desperate for tenure often spin out to the public.

However, all marriages entail risks, and some people think that online dating sites can be a great improvement in the ways that things were done in the past.

Average age of mail order brides

Starting a family is a serious business, and everybody enters this phase at a different age. Culture plays a tremendous role in this as well, accounting for a big difference between the age of first marriage in developed and developing parts of the world. In Asian and Latin countries, it happens earlier, so many Asian girls seeking foreign grooms are between 18 and 22 years only. European ladies believe that the best time for serious relationships is when you graduate from college and earn your living. No wonder most of them register accounts on mail order bride platforms between 22 and 27 years old. Of course, men can also find ladies looking for marriage in their late 20s and early 30s, but the percentage of these women isn’t very high.

One more thing to influence the decision to get a mail order bride status is the average marriage age in the country of the girl’s residence. For example, Chinese girls marry at 20, while Latin girls’ marriage age depends on the country: it’s 31.5 in Brazil and 24.8 in Colombia. Let’s check the average marriage age for other popular bride countries too.

It means that ladies from different countries feel the necessity to marry at a particular age, so you can expect to see many young African and Asian girls’ profiles, while Latin and European ladies are more likely to join the site being 25 and older.

Final Analysis

Is it worth it for you to consider a mail order bride?

That depends on your situation.  Do you have the basic financial resources? Do you feel okay about mail order brides cost?  Are you flexible enough to meet a woman, probably a younger woman, from a different culture and build a deep lasting relationship.

It does require work.  You have to learn about one another’s strengths and weaknesses.  You have to get at least some idea of the woman’s habits and personal deportment.  Most importantly, you have to come to a general agreement about the nature of your relationship, so you both have similar expectations.

Those are all tough enough to communicate in person, but they are especially difficult to communicate over vast distances to someone you have never met who probably speaks a different language and grew up in a different culture. Also, always remember the question of mail order bride costs.

But statistics show that ever year, thousands of mail order brides come to this country. Over three quarters of these marriages end happily and are long lasting.

If you end up happily married then the price of a mail order bride is a bargain. Think about the price of mail order brides like this, it is simply a matter of keeping up with changing times.

Author

Rowland Fields