In the Maliki Islamic legal theory that became dominant in Morocco under the Marinid dynasty (1244-1465), women had few options for choosing their husbands, with fathers able to exercise a large amount of control over their daughters’ marriage choices. However, legal sources from this time show that in practice, woman had multiple ways of avoiding undesirable marriages. Using published and manuscript sources from Morocco in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the fatwas (legal responses) of some of the most prominent scholars of the time, this study examines the cases of the most extreme method that women used to convince their reluctant families to accept their choice of a particular husband: running away with the man they wanted to marry. The end result in every case examined was a legally sanctioned marriage between the runaway bride and her chosen husband, almost always contracted with familial support, despite the social and legal transgressions that may have taken place on the path to achieving this goal. While marriages of this nature were not officially recognized by society or the Islamic legal system, I argue that in practice, families and jurists dealt with the reality of these unions when faced with the necessity. In this way, marriages based on mutual choice, and guidance about how society and the law could address them, forced their way into medieval Moroccan jurisprudence and Islamic legal discourse. This in essence altered the legal landscape to reflect the space that women carved out for themselves through their actions. The handling of these cases also demonstrates the ability of Islamic law to adapt to the needs and experiences of women and society. The current research highlights the importance of considering the implementation of law in the Islamic west, a place of rich scholarly and legal tradition, which has been comparatively understudied in relation to the central Islamic lands and the Ottoman Empire.