Arranged Marriage

I was talking with this colleague of mine who hailed from India. He was telling me the story of how he met his lovely wife:

"So my mom summoned me one day after lunch. She opened a book with a few photographs and asked me to pick one."

"After I picked one, the girl I picked went out for a couple of meals with me. Both of us approved of the other side, and her family and my family were obviously alright with it or else her photo would not have been in the book."

"So we got married." He did not tell me how much the dowry was to my great disappointment.

All in all it sounded like a very convenient way of finding a life partner. But to our modern ears, it seems a bit unromantic, and one may wonder whether such a orchestrated approach can lead to romantic bliss or not. However from what I have read on the Internet, its proponents claim that couples produced through such means end up happier than the usual couple on average.

Is this true? I suppose the happiness that stems from an arrangement, especially where that is the norm, is due to the fact that one tends not to lament about unpicked choices, as the pool to pick from is small. In other words, a free-market dating society is akin to a large supermarket where you have twenty different types of bread to choose from and you have to pick one, while an arranged marriage society is more like a store where there are two or three brands only. So people spend less time thinking about the alternatives and tell themselves that "my current choice is the best".