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Skyrim Marriage: The Ultimate Guide [With Complete Partner List]

You’ve travelled the entire expanse of Skyrim, caved in the skulls of innumerable Draugr and pickpocketed all the riches you could every dream of amassing – what’s left to do? Have you considered getting married?

Not only will marriage give you someone to love and care for in your virtual life, but there are also a number of significant benefits on offer for those who decide to tie the knot.

Wedding with Gilfre in the Temple of Mara in Riften in Skyrim
Marrying Gilfre in the Temple of Mara in Riften

Table of contents

Women you can marry in Skyrim

Men you can marry in Skyrim

Click here to go to the blog archive for all the above marriage guides where you can see each spouse listed with their picture.

Skyrim Marriage: Who Can You Marry?

There are more than 60 marriageable NPCs in Skyrim. You can see a full list above which link to further down in this article where you’ll find further information regarding requirements that must be met to wed each potential spouse. For some reason there are no Khajit that you can marry and a very small number of Argonian, Altmer and Redguard potential partners.

Benefits of Skyrim Marriage

  • Homecooked Meal: Once per day you can ask your spouse to cook a meal for you. When consumed this meal will increase Stamina, Magicka and Health regeneration by 25% for 600 seconds.
  • Lover’s Comfort: When you sleep in your spouse’s presence you will wake with the Lover’s Comfort effect which increases all skill XP gain by 15% for 8 hours.
  • Spouse’s Store: Your spouse will open a store and become a merchant who you can trade with when inside your marital home. They will also give you 100 gold per in-game day, which can accrue over time.
  • Adoption: If you have the Hearthfire add-on, you can adopt children with your spouse.
  • Shared Vampirism: If you’re a vampire and you have the Dawnguard add-on you can turn your spouse into a vampire with you.

How to get married in Skyrim

  1. Complete the tasks required to raise your potential spouse’s disposition towards you. This can include paying 500 gold to hire them as a follower, completing small personal requests for them or finishing more significant quest lines.
  2. Travel to the Temple of Mara in Riften. If the priest Maramal is not there, try nearby at the Bee and Barb instead.
  3. Speak to Maramal about the temple and he will mention that they hold weddings. Ask him how weddings work and then after he explains buy an Amulet of Mara off him for 200 gold.
  4. Wear the Amulet of Mara and return to your spouse. Talk to them, and if you have completed the prerequisite tasks correctly there will be a new dialogue prompt: “Interested in me, are you?”. Your spouse will then say that they are interested in you and ask if you feel the same. Say yes and you are now engaged.
  5. Travel back to the Temple of Mara and tell Maramal that you want to set the date for your wedding. He will tell you that the wedding is going to be held the following day from dawn until dusk.
  6. Wait until the next day and your spouse plus any marriage guests will join you in the chapel for the event. When prompted say “I do”.
  7. Congratulations! You’re now married.
  8. Make sure to quickly talk to your spouse before they leave the temple and make a decision on where you’re going to live, as some spouses are affected by bugs that leave them to dissappear if they leave the temple without you talking to them.

Best characters to marry in Skyrim

This, of course, comes down to personal preference. Regardless of your choice, getting married to anyone will assist you to a degree as all spouses will give you the same base benefits. That being said, each potential spouse does offer their own unique collection of traits such as being able to be recruited as a follower (with varying combat prowess) or owning their own house that you can move into (with varying location and feature desirability). Below is a list of some popular marriage candidates and their unique benefits.

  • Aela The Huntress: Pretty, strong fighter, expert archery trainer.
  • Avrusa Sarethi: Has her own crop of nirnroot, the only one in Skyrim.
  • Balimund: Expert-level Smithing trainer, you can live in the Scorched Hammer with him.
  • Farkas: Handsome guy and a master-level Heavy Armor trainer.
  • Jenassa: Sassy dialogue and will commit crime if player asks her to.
  • Marcurio: Witty banter and a good mage follower.
  • Mjoll the Lioness: Strong fighter and strong moral compass.
  • Muiri: Attractive, only female dedicated apothecary you can marry.
  • Scouts-Many-Marshes: One of the few marriageable male Argonians, very sweet personality and an Adept-level Light Armor trainer.
  • Shahvee: Only female Argonian you can marry in the game, uplifting dialogue.
  • Sorex Vinius: Good looking and you can live in the Winking Skeever in Solitude if you marry him.
  • Vilkas: Farkas’ brother, also good looking, master-level Two-Handed trainer.

Skyrim marriage console command

The following commands can be entered to raise a characters disposition towards you and to add them to the “marriageable” faction. This can be used to skip the prerequisites usually required to marry a character and instead get engaged to them instantly. It can also be used to help fix a bugged game when the prerequisite tasks have been completed but the romance dialogue option still isn’t appearing when you speak to your potential spouse.

Keep in mind that you will still need to be wearing an amulet of Mara for the romance dialogue to appear and need to have spoken to Maramal at the Temple of Mara in Riften, regardless of whether or not you use console commands.

Note: Console commands can only be used on a PC, not Xbox/Playstation/Switch etc.

Console command to increase NPC’s disposition towards the player

With the potential spouse in your view. Press the tilde key (~) to open the console. Click on the character who you want to marry. A string of characters will appear on the screen in white text. This is the character’s ID. Insert this when typing the commands below, where it says {Character ID}. Type the following, one line at a time, pressing the Enter/Return key after entering each line:

setrelationshiprank {Character ID} 4
player.setrelationshiprank {Character ID} 4

Console command to add NPC to marriageable faction

While still in the console, after entering the previous commands, enter the following command and press the Enter/Return key. You can then exit the console by presing the tilde (~) key again. The character should now show the romance dialogue option when spoken to if you’re wearing an Amulet of Mara and have previously spoken to Maramal about marriage. Make sure that the character ID text is still on screen when you enter the command below. If not, make sure to click on the character first so that their ID is showing.

addfac 19809 1

Note: If you run these commands on characters who weren’t intended to be married there could be buggy consequences.

How to get a divorce in Skyrim

There is no divorce in Skyrim. Unlike in real life, marriage in Skyrim really is forever. That’s why a guide like this one can be useful for giving you more information about all the potential spouses available, as the game really doesn’t intend you to get married more than once. While you may see people online and in forums talk about killing your husband/wife in the game to allow remarriage, this is erroneous. The only way to get married more than once in Skyrim is through the use of console commands. What this means is that if you’re playing on a console, you’re out of luck, time to make that marriage work! Even if your spouse dies you’ll just have to live out your character as a widow/er.

If however you’re playing on PC and you want to remarry, you can do so by entering the following commands in the console.

With the potential spouse in your view. Press the tilde key (~) to open the console. Click on the character who you want to ‘divorce’. A string of characters should appear on the screen in white text. Type the following, one line at a time, pressing the Enter/Return key after entering each line:

removefac 51596
player.removefac C6472
resetquest 74793
resetquest 21382
setstage 74793 10

Now just wait 24 hours and you should be ready to pursue your next romance.

And there you have it, hopefully, a useful guide to getting married in Skyrim. If you have any marriage related tips or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message. Otherwise, happy adventuring! I wish you and your Skyrim spouse to be all the best for the future.