Abstract
In this paper, I draw upon the empirical literatures on arranged marriages among South Asian Muslim immigrants in the U.S. and U.K. in order to (a) provide a multidimensional model of the marital formation process that challenges the binary between arranged and love marriage and to (b) propose how trust operates as a general mechanism to explain both micro-level personal, interpersonal, and institutional motivations and negotiations around different marriage models as well as macro-level shifts in marital practices over time.