In this article I’ll cover the costs involved with finding a mail order bride from the Philippines.
As a guy who’s been looking for an Asian bride for quite a while now, I hope I can help convince you that you really need to do some number crunching to make sure you really can afford to find a wife from the Philippines.
Asian women have a reputation for being thrifty and frugal.
However, the key message here is that finding an Asian wife is generally much more expensive than finding a wife in your own country.
So let’s delve into the issues of what finding love in Asia will cost you.
How Much is a Mail Order Bride?
This is what your major expenses will be in finding a mail order bride from the Philippines, or indeed Thailand or China:
Dating Site Costs
Asian dating sites cost from $20 to $30 a month. Save money by taking out an annual subscription. For me this brought down the annual cost of Chinese Love Links Platinum membership to just $13 a month.
Free dating sites are worth a look if you have more time than money. DateInAsia is the best one to use. However, this site has a lot of scammers, ladyboys and crazy women on it. So don’t fly all the way to the Philippines to meet just one lady you’ve seen on this site – it’s a gigantic risk.
Flight Costs
Flight costs are a major expense if you want to find a bride from the Philippines
By far the biggest costs of finding a mail order bride are flight and hotel costs.
Flight costs are a major expense if you’ve living in the USA, Canada or Western Europe. You can minimise costs by flying out of popular times – Christmas and Easter are more expensive for flying to Hong Kong and other hubs with connecting flight to the Philippines.
You can save money on flights by flying in low season months like January, May and November.
You can also save money by using the Gulf carriers and changing planes in Dubai or Qatar.
I like the Skyscanner website, which is another way of finding absolutely the cheapest flights available to Manila or Cebu.
Hotel Costs
Hotels in the Philippines are generally one of three types:
- World class
- Business hotels
- Dumps
World class hotels are generally 5 star places run by the major brands like Mandarin Oriental, Westin or Shangri-la. USA people like staying in these hotels and they have all the luxuries you expect. There aren’t too many of these in the Philippines though.
A typical 3 star Asian hotel room
Personally I like the business hotels – they tend to be 3 or 4 star and charge around $20 – $30 a night for a room. Often they have free internet access and a lobby that’s a good place for arranging to meet your hot date. These hotels are common on vacation booking sites like Expedia.
1 or 2 star hotels are often best avoided, especially on your first trip to the Philippines. These places can be unsafe, overrun with hookers and won’t really impress any women you bring back to your room!
I tend to use Expedia when booking a trip to Asia. You can book the flight and hotel at the same time, and they often offer a discount. I’ve rarely found somewhere that can beat their prices.
Note that if you want to do the whole Philippines nightlife thing rather than look for a long term partner then it’s also a good idea to find a girl friendly hotel. This will avoid any embarrasment from hotel staff who see you bringing women back to your room. A good hotel will also check a girl’s ID to make sure you’re not being set up for the classic “underage Filipina found your room” scam.
Living Expenses
Asian street food is cheap, but also a world away from McDonalds and Pizza Hut
I haven’t mentioned living costs while you’re visiting the Philippines. If you’re a Western guy then you’ll find the Philippines pretty darned cheap compared to the USA, Canada, Australia or Western Europe!
I’m currently looking for a Chinese wife, and the costs involved with dating Chinese women have been pretty low. A restaurant meal for two will cost you less than $10, and there are plenty of things you can do for free, like visit a park or a shopping mall.
Here’s some encouraging news. I took my Chinese girlfriend for a 10 day vacation in Shanghai. After paying flight and hotel costs, I only spent $340 the whole time I was there. And Shanghai is one of Asia’s more expensive cities.
So that’s your trip to the Philippines sorted. Look on a site like Expedia to check current flight and hotel package costs for visiting somewhere like Manila or Cebu.
Visa Costs
If you want to get your Filipina girlfriend to your country then it’s often going to cost you money. And this is a new way that Western governments have found to rip-off you (the tax payer). The UK fiance visa is extremely expensive – we’re talking nearly a month’s wage for the average man in the street!
You also need to budget for paperwork. If your Filipina has kids and you want them to live with you after marriage then a family immigration lawyer is pretty much essential. Otherwise you can do the paperwork yourself. However, make a silly mistake and you’ll invariably delay your Filipina wife or girlfriend’s entry to your country by several weeks or even months.
Marriage Costs
You’ll also need to factor in the cost of a marriage. Costs should be pretty low in the Philippines. For example, I noticed in China that wedding dresses sell for 20x less than they normally costs in the UK! And even better – Asian women tend to hire their dresses for the big day rather than buy them outright.
Support Costs
Never underestimate how much stuff a Filipina will want to ship back to her family in the Philippines!
Marry an Asian woman and you marry her family, so the saying goes.
Make sure you know how much you will have to pay to support your new adopted family!
The most likely reason a marriage to an Asian woman will end in divorce is money. Or rather, the man’s lack of money.
So make absolutely certain that you can afford your new wife after marriage! Yes, Asian women have a reputation for frugality, but they still love clothes and shoes as much as American women. And of course they’ll also want to fly back to visit their family on occasion.
Of course Filipino women are often very hard working, and they will be able to help you out financially. Men with successful marriages to Filipinas often pursuade their wives to work by telling them they can send much of their wages back home to support their relatives.
Now The Reality Check!
I hope this article has given you a better understanding of how much it costs to find a Filipino bride.
Now for the reality check…
Your true costs of finding a Filipino bride will mostly come down to luck.
Is she worth it? If the answer is yes, then she's probably The One...
You could get lucky and find your future wife on your first visit to the Philippines. In which case your costs may not be that high.
But look at my situation. I went on two not terribly successful trips to China and then Japan in order to meet potential Asian wives. None of these dates worked out in the end. I then visited China again. This trip was more successful – I dated a girl for 3 months, but then I realised we weren’t suitable for each other. Finally I had even more luck on my next trip to China. Yet after spending ten days with this Chinese girl, I still don’t know if she’s right for me.
So finding a wife from the Philippines could cost you a lot more than you think. $10,000 is a good, ball park figure.
Really the best way of finding an Asian wife is to spend at least 3 and preferably 6 months in Asia. Find a rental apartment or long stay hotel, and take your time to find the best Asian wife for you. This could work out a lot cheaper than the pot luck of visiting a lady on a one or two week wife finding trip to the Philippines.
Anyway, good luck with your search for a bride from the Philippines.
If you have any questions about the costs of finding an Asian bride, or you have any suggestions for cutting costs, then leave your comments below.