Why for a divorce does a woman do many different actions, but doesn't do them for Kiddushin?

Question

I've witnessed the giving of a get, and it has many steps (the below bulletpoints are adapted from here). For example:

• the woman accepts the folded get into her cupped hands grasping it.
• The woman then raises her hands, while holding the get, about 30 centimeters high. This act called ‘hagbahah (raising)’, serves as a symbolic legal act of transfer of ownership.
• After the hagbahah, the woman places the get under her left armpit, next to her heart
• takes 2-3 steps forwards
• turns around, and retraces her steps (walking a total of 4 amot)

Presumably all of this is done because we're Machmirim and want to make sure the giving of the get was chal.

Why aren't we also this level of machmir for kinyan kiddushin? Namely, instead of just putting the ring on the kallah's finger, why doesn't she also do all these additional kinyanim that we do for a get?

Answer 1

As noted by @joelk in a comment, if the kiddushin (engagement) are not valid, there is a bitul aseh (annulment of a positive commandment; see Rambam Laws of Marriage 1:1-2) or, at worst*, no marriage (see, e.g. here). If, however, the giving of the get is invalid, every subsequent act of intimacy between the woman and any future "husband" is a capital crime for both, and any descendant that results from such act is a mamzer, forbidden to marry into Israel for all future generations. As such, we try to (at least l'chatchila - ideally) keep stringencies and/or minority opinions, to avoid complications down the road.

[In addition (and as per a comment from @DoubleAA), see, e.g. Rabbi Shmuel Hain who draws a more fundamental distinction between the act of kiddushin and that of divorce. Thus, according to some opinions (see e.g. Avnei Miluim 30:1 and Mishne L'Melech Ishut 1:1) kiddushin may be valid even in cases where gittin are not.]

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*except in the very unlikely scenario where she accepts kiddushin from another man while assuming she is already married - though even then, the chupa alone, and/or subsequent consummation of the "first" marriage, may have been enough effect the first marriage, thereby preempting the second (id).

Answer 2

Years ago I saw the Nesivos Shlom explains Har Gegegos using this Ran, Nedarim (30a), s.v. vi’Isha Nami (.ר”ן נדרים (ל (it should answer your question)

אלא כיון שהתורה אמרה כי יקח איש אשה ולא אמרה כי תלקח אשה לאיש לא כל הימנה שתכניס עצמה לרשות הבעל ומש”ה אמרי’ בפ”ק דקידושין (דף ה) דאי אמרה היא הריני מאורסת לך אין בדבריה ממש אלא מכיון שהיא מסכמת לקדושי האיש היא מבטלת דעתה ורצונה ומשוי נפשה אצל הבעל כדבר של הפקר והבעל מכניסה לרשותו הלכך אין אנו דנין בקדושין מצד האשה אלא מצד הבעל

Ran states that the woman must be totally passive. It is the man who acts and takes the wife, not the wife who is acts to have herself taken (it goes without saying that she does not take him as her husband). This requires her not only to not give the object of value, but also to not even make the verbal declaration. All that is needed, indeed all that is allowed, is that she not stand in the way of the man’s act, that she acquiesces to what he is doing. He further elaborates that she must make herself “like an object that is hefker, without an owner,” and this allows the man to take possession of her.

see https://library.yctorah.org/2016/08/kiddushin-ownership-or-partnership-part-5-kinyan-and-kiddushin-in-competition-gemara-and-rishonim/