How to get married in Skyrim

Skyrim marriage — (Image credit: Bethesda)

You can get married in Skyrim to a range of companions and characters. As well as true love this will provide a range of benefits, buff and extras once you get hitched, which can be enhanced with a prudent choice of spouse.

However, it's not something you'll know about straight away and it involves either find a specific temple and completing a quest, locating a specific character, or picking up random loot. We can help you with all this and guide you on your way to a happily married life.

How to get married in Skyrim

Skyrim temple of mara — (Image credit: Bethesda)

To get married in Skyrim you'll need an Amulet of Mara. The 'right' way to get one is to go to Riften and find the Temple of Mara. Speak to one of the priests about the temple and they'll give you a small quest called The Book of Love to complete that will get you the amulet. However you can also just buy one from a priest called Maramal who you can find in the Temple, or in the nearby Bee and Barb. You can also occasionally get one randomly as loot from corpses.

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Once you have an amulet of Mara you can wear it and when speaking to any one you can marry, you'll see some special dialogue. If they agree to marry (and there might be a quest involved in some cases) return to the Temple of Mara to request the ceremony and wait 24 hours.

Once the the service is complete in Skyrim, you can then speak to your partner to decide where you will settle down and make your home. They will then stay there, waiting for your return from adventuring.

What does marriage get you in Skyrim

There are a few of benefits of getting married in Skyrim. For example, you can ask your partner to make a Home Cooked Meal, once per day, which will boost Health, Magic, and Stamina by 25% for up-to 10 minutes. You can also get a daily bonus by the name of 'Lover's Comfort' for sleeping in the same house as your partner, which boosts skill learning speed by 15% for eight hours (so long as you don't have the Lover Stone activated).

Partners can be sent to live in any home you own, as well as any children you may chose to adopt. If your betrothed has, or starts a business, you can request a share of the profits once a day (and it will just accumulate if you don't, until you do collect it).

Who can you marry in Skyrim?

There are plenty of choices for who you can marry in Skyrim with over 60 NPCs that could potentially become a spouse. That includes a lot of the best Skyrim companions, several key NPCs for quests and certain traders. Once you have the amulet it's probably quicker to wear it and speak to all the options you have than anything else. Some will have a quest attached that can reach from a few actual quests they might be associated with, to fetching a key item or completing small challenge. It's mainly all busy work and there's little to keep you between you and your love once you've made a decision.

One thing to remember is that there is no easy way out of marriage in Tamriel. If you want a divorce in Skyrim the only legit way to do it is take your partner somewhere quiet and murder them (yay true love). You also can't remarry afterwards either so it doesn't achieve much. There are mods and console commands that can cancel marriages and attempt to let you try again but they're seem very error prone and often leave you unable, again, to remarry.

Realistically, if you're not sure about marriage your only real option if you change your mind is reloading an old save before you tied the knot. Maybe that will change when The Elder Scrolls 6 finally arrives.