Several parts combine into one character.

嫁 is a compound ideograph: 女 (woman) + 家 (house). The composite literally means "a woman moving households" = to marry into another family. The character preserves the patrilocal marriage custom of ancient East Asia, where a bride moved from her natal family's house to her husband's family's house. From a contemporary perspective the etymology is patriarchally loaded, but the character documents the marriage practices of its time.

Korean reading "ga." 嫁娶 (gachwi, "marrying out and marrying in" = the full marriage process from both gendered perspectives — formal classical compound), 再嫁 (jaega, "remarriage of a widowed woman" — a fraught term in traditional Confucian Korean society where remarriage was discouraged for women), 歸嫁 (gwiga, returning bride). Korean preserves 가 in formal and historical registers.

Mandarin jià, 4th tone. 嫁 (jià, to marry — said of a woman; the male equivalent is 娶 qǔ "to marry, take a wife"), 出嫁 (chūjià, "to go out in marriage" = to marry out — said of brides departing the family), 改嫁 (gǎijià, "to remarry"), 嫁人 (jiàrén, "to marry a person" = to take a husband). Mandarin's grammatical asymmetry — different verbs for male and female marriage — encodes traditional gendered marriage roles linguistically.

Japanese on-reading カ (ka) — 嫁取り (yometori, taking a bride — combining on and kun), 転嫁 (tenka, "transfer-marriage" = shifting blame / passing the buck — metaphorical extension where "passing on" the bride became "passing on" responsibility: 責任を転嫁する sekinin o tenka suru "to shift the blame"). Kun-readings: よめ (yome) = bride / daughter-in-law; お嫁さん (oyomesan) is the everyday word for "bride / wife (someone's)." とつぐ (totsugu, "to marry into a family") — 嫁ぐ (totsugu) — used for daughters who marry out: 娘が嫁ぐ (musume ga totsugu, "the daughter marries into another family"). The Japanese expression carries some emotional weight: parents speak with bittersweet feeling about their daughters tsugu-ing.

Memory aid: woman (女) + house (家) — moving households = marriage. The patrilocal custom encoded in the character.