Marriage and Alliance Practice

Documented practices accompanying marriage as a transaction or alliance between kin groups: bridewealth, payment from the groom side to the bride family, dowry, property or payment a bride brings into a marriage, and blood brotherhood, a ritual bond of alliance modeled on kinship but created between unrelated men. Belongs here: a documented transactional or alliance-creating practice tied to marriage or kinship alliance. Does not belong here: the marriage rule or arrangement itself, such as polygyny or cross-cousin marriage, which is classified as a kinship-system type entity under Kinship and Family Systems' own Marriage Systems subcategory rather than here, this subcategory covering the accompanying practice rather than the marriage rule.