Here is part of my essay for my college English class:

In a formal arranged marriage, the groom’s family would give the bride’s family many expensive gifts and treasures to ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage. The bride’s family would send their daughter away on the wedding day with even more gifts and jewelries. Arranged marriage was mainly for upper and middle class families. For lower class people, arranged marriage was altered as purchasing marriages or exchanging marriages. For the poor families, all they had was their daughter and they would loss a laborer after she married so the groom’s family would pay the bride’s family to marry her. That was called a purchasing marriage. For some poor families, if they didn’t have any money to pay for it, but the groom had a sister and the bride had a brother, they would let the groom’s sister marry the bride’s brother to get an even exchange. That was called an exchanging marriage. For the poor villagers it is still happening today in China. I eye-witnessed one exchanging marriage when I was 6 years old in China. That had a happy ending though.