Getting Marriage

Each gender of main character has 10 marriage candidates available. If you choose to get married then you will have to increase your affection with that person and meet several other requirements before you can propose. After you are married you will have 2 children.

One of the benefits of marriage is you can ask your spouse and children to handle some of the farm responsibilities.

Requirements

One of the biggest requirement is to raise the person's affection up to at least 9 hearts. You can see how many hearts you have with a person by going into your main menu (the C button on your wii-chuck). As you increase the number of hearts you will see a few events:

2 Hearts - The candidate will stop by your house in the morning and deliver a gift.
4 Hearts - You'll receive another morning gift from the person
5 Hearts - If you talk to the person early in the morning, he/she will ask if you would like to get together that day. Sometimes it is just for sight-seeing and other times it is for lunch. You will want to be at the date location by 4:00 pm.
6 Hearts - You will receive a love letter in your mailbox.
7 Hearts - When you talk to the person in the morning he/she will ask to meet with you at the Lighthouse in Harmonica Town. At that point you will be told how much the person likes you and you can select various ways to respond. If you do get a love confession it will lower the affection with all of the other marriage candidates.

Most of the candidates will follow this pattern. The Witch and Harvest Goddess will only deliver the 2-heart front door gift (no 4-heart gift), while the Wizard and Harvest King will only deliver a 4-heart gift to your front door (no 2-heart gift).

Another requirement you need is to upgrade the size of your house. You need to pay Dale 25,000 G and supply 100 pieces each of Lumber and Material Stone. Once the house has been remodeled to level 2 you'll have a bed large enough for 2 people.

Getting the Blue Feather

The next day after you see your first love confession, Hamilton will send you a letter. He explains the requirements for marriage and mentions a story about a blue bird.

When a marriage candidate reaches 9 hearts, you'll awake in the morning to find Mira on your farm. She was walking by and noticed the Blue Bird was around. She suggests you chase after it because you can use the feather to propose. The bird can be found on the snowy summit of Garmon Mountain between 5pm and 7pm. You can also visit Hamilton when he's home and he'll tell you a similar story about the bird.

To get your own feather, go through the 45 floors of the Garmon Upper Mine. You need to wait on floor 45 until 5:00 pm, when you can go through the mine exit to the summit of the mountain. You'll see the Blue Bird out on the cliff but it flies away as you get closer. Luckily a feather drops out of the sky as it escapes into the clouds.

Proposing

Once you have the level 2 house and the Blue Feather, find your potential spouse and hand over the feather. The two of you will move your meeting to the garden outside of Celesta Church, where you can choose several sentences to say as your proposal; some are more romantic than others.

After the proposal, the two of you will head to the Town Hall. Hamilton will congratulate you and will schedule your marriage ceremony. The ceremony could be as soon as the next day or later on in the week.

At this point you don't have anything you need to do other than take care of your farm as normal.

Wedding Ceremony

On the day of your wedding, you will awaken and immediately go to your wedding at Celesta Church. You don't get to water your crops or take care of your animals on this day. Your only task is getting married.

At the ceremony you will be asked if you wish to get married (the typical "I do" question). Although there is the option to tell Perry that you don't want to get married, the game will not let you run out of the church at this point. The only way to continue on is to tell him that you will marry.

After the wedding Hamilton will give you tickets to a honeymoon boat ride, and you'll have your portrait taken by Simon. Once that is finished you will appear back inside of your house with your new spouse. He or she will ask you what nick name you want him/her to call you, and after your selection you will retire for the day.

The next morning you can choose to add this marriage announcement to the message board feature of your Wii console.

When you're ready to use the Honeymoon Ticket that Hamilton gave you at the wedding, go down to the dock and hand it over to Pascal. The weather must be good (sunny or cloudy) and it has to be before noon.

Pascal will take the two of you to Toucan Island, where you'll spend the day walking along the beach and finish with watching the sunset. You will return to Harmonica Town at 10:00 pm the same day that you left.

The Harvest Goddess, Harvest King, Witch, and Wizard marriage are different. Instead of a grand wedding, it will be just the two of you and Perry at the church in the late evening hours. You don't get a honeymoon ticket afterwards, and you don't get to choose a nick name but you will be told what your special spouse's true name is.

After Marriage

One of the unique things that occur is the background music that plays as you are inside of your house or inside of your barns will change.

Every morning your spouse will pack you a lunch. You can also talk to the person and ask them to do some of the farm work. Another option is to have your spouse follow you around when you're walking about outside, just like you can with the wild animal pets; blowing the Animal Whistle won't make your spouse do a trick though. Taking a walk with your spouse will help to increase their affection.

If you want to have your spouse work on the farm, you have eight options to select from: foraging for herbs and mushrooms, picking weeds, watering crops, harvesting crops, brushing the animals, milking, eggs and silk collecting, mining, and fishing. Some spouses are better at certain tasks than others:

Anissa: weeding, harvesting, and foraging
Calvin: weeding, brushing, and mining
Candace: watering, brushing, and foraging
Chase: harvesting, egg/milk collecting, and foraging
Gill: harvesting, milking, and foraging
Jin: watering, egg/silk collecting, and foraging
Julius: watering, egg/silk collecting, and foraging
Kathy: weeding, brushing, and foraging
Luke: weeding, brushing, and fishing
Luna: watering, egg/silk collecting, and foraging
Maya: watering, egg/silk collecting, and fishing
Owen: weeding, brushing, and mining
Phoebe: weeding, egg/silk collecting, and mining
Renee: milking, egg/silk collecting, and fishing
Selena: harvesting, milking, and fishing
Toby: watering, milking, and fishing
Witch: egg/silk collecting, brushing, and foraging
Wizard: weeding, harvesting, and foraging

Work must be selected between 6:00 am and 7:00 am, and cannot take place on a festival day. The higher the affection you have with your spouse, the better they'll do at their assigned chore.

The Harvest King and Harvest Goddess are exceptions to this; since the two celestial beings will not live in your house after marriage, they will not be there to make you a daily lunchbox or be available for chores.

After you are married you will finally get the chance to celebrate your birthday with your family instead of with the villagers. Go into your house after 6:00 pm to have a little party with your spouse (and any children you might also have at the time). Your spouse will also give you a birthday present, although it won't be anything spectacular; it's the thought that counts after all.

When your party is over you'll return back to your house at midnight.

Your spouse's birthday can also be a special celebration. You can either wait until after 6pm to go inside your house, or give them a gift to start the birthday event. If you start the spouse's birthday event in the morning, the entire day is set aside for the birthday meal and it will end at midnight.