Oh, I wanted to clarify about dowries: the way it worked in rich families, the woman's father would put up a dowry for his daughter, and the husband (or his family) would then more or less match it, in the form of a "settlement." This was actually the main discussion when the man went to ask his future father-in-law's permission to marry his daughter, and lawyers could be involved. Usually this meant cash money, land being reserved for sons even if not entailed (esp. eldest son and heir), but sometimes the income from a specific piece of land might be indicated as the source of the settlement or dowry.
The resulting money would usually have been put in "gilts," ie British government bonds, which were assumed to be paying 5% interest (something we'd kill to get nowadays BTW!). The wife would use the interest income as her "pin money" to buy things without having to justify them to her husband -- in at least one Georgette Heyer an indulgent mother pays off a feckless younger son's gambling debts repeatedly this way.
Does anyone else remember, as late as Brideshead Revisited (set 1920s and 30s) Rex Mottram gets frustrated because he agrees to "settle" money on Julia, but doesn't want to put it in gilts because (being a vulgar go-getter) he thinks it would make much better returns in other investments?
Incidentally, though usually all of women's other property automatically became her husband's on marriage, even before the Married Women's Property Act (1882) the lawyers for rich heiresses did have ways of ring-fencing her inheritance for her if they really, really wanted to. That's what happens when Plantaganet Palliser, later duke and prime minister, marries the heiress Glencora in Trollope's Palliser series. Never seen a clear explanation of how, though. Quite often in later Victorian novels provision for the second son came from the mother; the second son could even end up better off than an older sibling if the main estate was heavily mortgaged by feckless forebears.
Anyway, the wife's settlement or dower-rights was thers when her husband died, but she had also to use it to support any unmarried and unprovided children still living with her. In Sense & Sensibility, one of Mrs Dashwood's problems is that her husband dies too soon. Had he been alive when his daughters reached marriage age, he and his estate would have dowered them -- or if he had provided something in his will. Having failed to do so (another careless father), he implores the heir on his deathbed to "do right" by the girls, but the heir's wife talks him out of it, remember? So Mrs D will have to dower her girls if they are to have any dowry at all.
As for marriage at the "church door" or "church porch," yes indeed that was normal in Europe at least till the Council of Trent clarified that marriage was a sacrament (post Martin Luther) and in England much longer (because not Catholic, marriage not a sacrament). The Catholic, unlike the C of E, marriage ceremony never required the woman to promise to "obey." And it was the Catholic church, starting its battle right from its foundations, that insisted the bride as well as the groom had to consent to marriage, though of course she might still be subject to family bullying, her own worldly concerns, etc etc.
Sorry TMI I'm sure!