International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research ISSN: 2455-8834 Volume: 04, Issue: 04 "April 2019" www.ijsser.org Copyright © IJSSER 2019, All rights reserved Page 2767 ‘COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE AMONG INTERMARRIED COUPLES IN NEPAL’ Bimla Kumari Gurung ICSSR Doctoral Fellow, Department of sociology, Gurunanak Dev University, Amritsar (Punjab), Pin code-143005, India ABSTRACT The present paper examine the courtship and marriage among intermarried couples in Nepal. The study focuses on how the intimacy was developed? What were the factors that attracted toward each other? How long courtship lasted? What types of marriage respondents had?. The study was conducted in Kathmandu valley. The valley includes three districts that are, Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur district. Information was collected from 210 women who were in intermarriage by using snowball technique. In the study, it is found that most of the couples met each other through common friends. 28.57 per cent of the couples’s courtship lasted for two years and above before marriage and 54.76 per cent of the couples had marriage by elopement. Keywords: intermarriage, courtship, couples, marriage, Nepal. INTRODUCTION Marriage is an important life event to the people of Nepal. It is not only a union of two individuals but of two families, their caste, religion and culture. Nepal is a country with multi- ethnic groups, religions, castes and culture; therefore, different forms of marriages are in practiced. The different forms of marriages are arranged marriage, preferred marriage, elopement marriage, capture marriage, forced marriage, exchange marriage etc (Bista 1965; Majupurias 2009; Subedi 2010). Arranged marriage is the most common form of marriage where parents have different consideration in selecting mates for their children (Ahuja 1993). Mate selection is an important process, but societies around the world differ considerably in how they negotiate the marriage. Most of the Asian countries including Nepal do not have the open courtship systems that are common in western countries. Instead many factors such as caste, religion, income, values promote traditional mate selections (Benokraitis 2014). Therefore, young men and women have very little freedom in selecting partners for them and expected to marry within their own castes and religions. Moreover, in Nepali societies endogamy is the common practice