Is there a difference?

[xx smartie xx]

While reading , I found many expressions to tell that two people are married..

eg,
- they got married in 1987. (i understand this)
- he married her (is it necessary to put the male as sub. and the female as object??? or it is ok whoever we start with?? )
- she was married to him (is it necessary to put the female as sub. and the male as object??? or it is ok whoever we start with??)

What are other expressions i can use in writing stories?

Are there rules for this. Does it have a relation to culture?

Thanks a lot

[buggles]

While reading , I found many expressions to tell that two people are married..

eg,
- they got married in 1987. (i understand this)
- he married her (is it necessary to put the male as sub. and the female as object??? or it is ok whoever we start with?? )
- she was married to him (is it necessary to put the female as sub. and the male as object??? or it is ok whoever we start with??)

What are other expressions i can use in writing stories?

Are there rules for this. Does it have a relation to culture?

Thanks a lot

As far as I'm aware, there are no rules for this in BrE and culture doesn't come into it.

It's just as acceptable to have the female as the subject as it is the male, so there's no problem with.........

She married him.
He was married to her.
He and she are married.
She and he are married.

We also refer to marriage as............

getting wed
getting spliced
tying the knot
being joined in Holy Matrimony

I'm sure there's many more, but I can't think of any at the moment.

buggles (not a teacher)

[AlexAD]

It's quite an unexpected thing for me that "He was married to her" is acceptable because as far as I know we use pattern "someone marries someone" with no preposition. Would you mind explaining that?
Thank you in advance.

[buggles]

It's quite an unexpected thing for me that "He was married to her" is acceptable because as far as I know we use pattern "someone marries someone" with no preposition. Would you mind explaining that?
Thank you in advance.

As I'm not one, I'll leave the explanation to a teacher. All I can say is that in BrE we always use "to" in that context............

George is married to Sally.
Mary is married to Bill.
George and Sally are married to each other.

It's correct that we marry someone, but we get married to someone and we are married to someone.

How else could we convey that Mary is married to Bill without using "to"?

[engee30]

How else could we convey that Mary is married to Bill without using "to"?

♥♦♣♠ NOT A TEACHER ♥♦♣♠
Surely not by means of with.

[buggles]

♥♦♣♠ NOT A TEACHER ♥♦♣♠
Surely not by means of with.

Your use of "not" is correct: we never use "married with" only "married to".

[flunn]

In "He is married to her" isn't "married" acting as a participial adjective. (Compare "a married man.")?

And so shouldn't the prepositional phrase, "to him," be regarded as the complementation of an adjective in the same way that "of him" is the complementation of the adjective "afraid" in "She is afraid of him"?

So there's nothing really perplexing about the fact that we say "She is married to him" but NOT "She married to him" because in the first case "married" is a (participial) adjective, in the second it's the past form of be VERB.

(Compare that pair with "She is interested in him" (adjective with complementation) and "He interests her" (verb followed by direct object).

[buggles]

In "He is married to her" isn't "married" acting as a participial adjective. (Compare "a married man.")?

And so shouldn't the prepositional phrase, "to him," be regarded as the complementation of an adjective in the same way that "of him" is the complementation of the adjective "afraid" in "She is afraid of him"?

So there's nothing really perplexing about the fact that we say "She is married to him" but NOT "She married to him" because in the first case "married" is a (participial) adjective, in the second it's the past form of be VERB.

(Compare that pair with "She is interested in him" (adjective with complementation) and "He interests her" (verb followed by direct object).

Makes good sense to me. Thanks, flunn.