I think the successes of my children’s marriages is because after all the checking up and background vetting, ultimately we recognized that we should not control the final choice, but rather support our child in seeking his/her soulmate – not someone we idealized at fantasy level, but someone who would create a harmonious and Torah-dik bayis ne’eman according to their natures as individuals. It works! From your vantage point, it looks like you feel you can do this with the girl in question. But how well do you really know this girl? Here is what you may not realize you may be in store for: a young girl who is easily defying her parents right now, because of the Romeo-Juliet effect, but a little further down the road, capitulating to the parents’ control issues. Maybe not only in terms of accepting you , but there could be a lot more control issues going on. The parents as you describe them are not entirely rational or fair, but too image-conscious. Will you be willing to handle interesting scenes coming up in the future where her side of the family has a simcha and drops hints that she should come but you should find something else to do that night? Or if you go visit, please stay in the house – don’t go walking down the street together and make a busha? At the very least, get pre-nuptial couple’s counseling, even a couple of sessions, by someone frum, and then plan to live very far from the in-laws. When bez”H there are grandchildren, things may change, if you can be patient, but without properly preparing and equipping yourself with strategies via the counseling, your poor wife may get really disturbed by being always in the middle between her husband and her parents. Of course you can bypass their approval, but prepare yourselves, to avoid these messy scenarios.
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