More Awesome Than You!

I made my sim go to China and get a NPC from there to be her boyfriend. Later, I invited him over and tried to get them engaged- no matter how many high-level romantic interactions they did, ''Propose Marriage'' did not appear. The next day I made her go back to China and try proposing marriage there and it worked, but she had to go home before they could actually get married so I invited him over again. In the box that appeared asking me who I want to invite, it listed his relationship to my Sim as engaged but when he actually came, they were strangers. I got them up to romantic interests but ''Ask to go steady'' didn't appear, so I tried a random sim from Sunset Valley and again, their relationship wouldn't go higher than romantic interest. Also, her family tree wouldn't open- neither could her brother's, his wife's or their children's. Can this be fixed somehow?

I've had several of my sims marry foreigners successfully, but I've always done it in their home country (Egypt, China or France) always by doing the private wedding option. It would usually take a few trips to get their relationship high enough, but once it was, I'd have my sim propose, then have a private wedding while on vacation. Their new spouse would then join my sim in the base camp and I could have them leave together when the vacation was over. The reason I do it this way is because I've read posts from lots of people who ran into problems by trying to marry a foreign sim in their sims' hometown.

I managed to marry a sim in the way you tried first, but I felt lucky that it worked as I also read reports of problems.

If your sim now has a lot of other problems, you're in bigger trouble and I've no idea how to help.  This would be a good time to revert to a back up if you've got one.  I was glad I thought to make one before I tried the proposal.