Marriage

Is chuppah an actual obligation, or just minhag? Is it biblical or rabbinic? Also is there a minimum height of the chuppah?

We have a son with developmental disabilities that prevent him from having a normal life. He will never be able to live independently. Our rabbi said he is patar mitzvah. He is in his 20s and we have guardianship over him now, and after we are no longer able to care for him, he will probably have to go to a group home. He has good social skills and a job that he does very well and he wants to be as independent as possible. He is jealous he cannot have a fully independent life like most adults. It is obvious he is attracted to women and he wants to get married someday. He understands the concept of love and marriage. We discussed this with both his doctor and our rabbi and they both feel he should not marry. But we feel his pain and believe it would be cruel to deprive him of his desires and we disagree with both of them. We know of other marriages between those who are intellectually impaired that are successful, some who even have children. How should we approach this? And what if we override what our rabbi has told us and take steps to find him a wife?

Is a man permitted to get into huge amounts of debt and drive himself toward bankruptcy in order to please his wife and keep their marriage happy when she has heavy materialistic cravings and no amount of counseling can curb her desires, and if those needs of hers are not met, marital harmony is compromised?

Is crashing a wedding forbidden? An acquaintance in my community is getting married? Many people I know are invited, but I am not. I guess they don’t consider me an important enough friend. I want to be there. If I showed up and maybe took the seat of a no-show guest, would I be doing anything wrong?

We are getting married in the summer next year. We have lived together for more than seven years and already spend a lot of time together alone. We just watched a video from an orthodox rabbi who said Yichud at a wedding is supposed to be the first time a couple spends alone. Since we have already been alone and sexually active for so many years now, do we still do Yichud at the wedding?

Without even telling us he was dating, our son who is away at college recently got engaged to a young woman he met on his own on the campus outside the auspices of a shadchan or anyone who could give him proper guidance. We were concerned about this and we really wanted to meet her. We invited her to spend a weekend with us and she came dressed in a miniskirt. We soon learned she wears miniskirts every day and that she will not cover her hair after she gets married. She apparently follows a brand of Orthodox Judaism that is permissive of many things our family and community and local rebbeim consider unacceptable. And it appears our son has viewed his relationship with her as a license to adopt that lifestyle which she exposed him to and engage in activities we taught him were forbidden. We are utterly embarrassed and devastated! They are evidently moving forward quickly with plans to wed because she wants her grandparents to be at her wedding and she does not know how much longer they have to live. They might even marry during the semester break less than a month away! We are unprepared emotionally for this. He only recently broke this news to us. We have not even met her parents in person. They live far away. We met them a few times on video. They are nice people, but their Jewish values seem to different from our. Our son has been over their house more than once and says they are nice warm people. They like him a lot and are happy to have him as a son-in-law. This young woman is not bad. She seems like a very nice girl who is warm and caring and very intelligent and wholesome. Our concerns are that he is rushing this relationship when they only met at the beginning of the semester, and she is detracting from his religious observance that he was always so scrupulous to follow in the past. All might seem well early on, but they are both very young and naive.