It depends on the characters and also try to make it so that both sims have wants about it. Currently, my sims have been engaged for 2 weeks as they're building their home first which is $$$. Also, I don't feel like playing vacations (honeymoon) yet.
In my game rules, kiss -> date/woohoo -> engagement -> move in -> marriage if, one or both wants it. If I have a cold digging sim or a sim with nefarious motives, marriage happens immediately.

A few Sim hours to 1-2 days, until a convenient for the wedding comes along.

Sometimes for only 1 interaction, then they get married. Half the time in their bathroom... or kitchen... and somehow one of them is always in their underwear.

Other times, I'll get them engaged and then try and wait a rotation or two. Maybe more if one of the sims is in Uni still. I rarely give them a proper wedding though, I guess I'm just lazy. I should really put the effort in, most times I'm not actually planning it, it's more just a convience "they want to have a baby/they're pregnant and I want the baby to have the Dad's last name, but the sim blender is sooooo much effort" kind of thing.

Well isn't that so true

Sure thing, I'm on my tablet right now and won't be on my simming computer until sometime tomorrow or the weekend, but can definitely post a pic or two when I am.




Yes, it's by Chris. I used to have this mat before I started my downloads over from scratch.

Will have to double-check, but feel like I have a mod that removes the game's wedding arch falling flowers animation that I've always hated, which now makes using it as is or with an invisible recolor tolerable enough for me. Plus, I have a 3t2 converted arch and a hacked arch as well...which might be why I didn't add Chris' mat back to my game.

Oh, yes, right. And did you see the name changer that is for weddings that I linked? I think that's the last one I saw PleasantSims use.

On average about three seconds. I'm not an events person IRL and that carries over into my game. Someone proposes and then I let them get married. Or sometimes, I just sims manipulate them into a marriage, but that's actually more steps, so I usually just do the propose/marriage thing.

And then sometimes I marry complete strangers using the hacked arch.

No more than 1-2 days at most, normally I propose on a date, 1 or both get the want to get engaged and as soon as that goes off 1 or both want to get married.

Quick, simple and a way they go.

My couples tend to get engaged while at college, so they have plenty of time to organize the wedding, which takes place at the home of the sim whose surname was going to be used during the first rotation of that household after the younger one graduated. Sims with families in the hood will generally move back in with them temporarily and hold the wedding at home. In a neighborhood like Retropleasantspot, where not everyone goes to college, there's more variation, and with single CAS or family bin adults, the conditions will vary and depend on factors like budget, time off from work, trimester, and cultural/social factors. Size of the neighborhood also factors in, as a rotation in Drama Acres could be several months long, but a rotation in depression-era Riverblossom takes one to three play sessions. It was no hardship for me as player to postpone Cyd Roseland's wedding to LaShawn Cameron for two rotations while he got his crop in and sold a puppy in order to afford the wedding arch. That would have been an eternity for a Drama Acres couple.

For my purposes, a wedding arch = a church wedding and the archless "get married" interaction = a civil ceremony. The "get married" interaction is boring, so civil ceremonies are very rare. The only one I can think of that I did as a story decision (as opposed to the early days of play when I was experimenting) was when Clovis Point and Sadie Hawkins got pregnant at the same time. Her family was huge and hated him, and they'd both just popped, so it was easier on everyone to move him in, exchange rings, fall into bed, and let everyone know afterward. Even impulse-marriages that sidestep family fuss for whatever reason tend to happen at public arches.

IRL I find weddings (as practiced in America) tedious, stressful, and expensive, and have a theory that the length and happiness of the marriage are in inverse proportion to the fuss and expense of the wedding; but I love sim weddings, so I want a party if it's reasonable for the couple at all. I myself got married on an outing consisting of my husband and me, his visiting six-year-old daughter, and our then-housemate, under an arch with paper flowers at a basement chapel across the street from the courthouse ten minutes after getting the license (because the minister did walk-ins and you have to make an appointment with a JP). We ate on the Riverwalk afterward, and the minister said he'd never had a wedding party that seemed to be having as much fun as us. But sim mothers-in-law can't try to run the show, sims don't have to travel halfway across country to attend, nobody's egos have to be juggled, no ugly bridesmaid dresses are necessary, and sim guests don't spend a lot of money on gifts the happy couple will never use. So put up the arch, set out the chairs, load the buffet, call the party, teleport in a few toddlers, roll the video, and raise the roof with pillow fights, kicky bag, hugging, family kissing, dancing of all sorts, videogames, in-law altercations, introductions, musical performances, and possibly a woohoo or two.

In my game, my sims only stay happily married, if they don't catch their spouses cheating and/or if they don't fight each other. No cheating or fighting = happy marriage.

Interesting... I feel like I tend to wait one in-game month usually, because I hate 3am weddings, and I like to buy all the stuff, but that's really only one sim day! Typically, before I've gotten around to building the church, if my pixels want to get hitched, it happens at home, so as long as they have the money for the arch and a cake and some chairs (I'm a stickler - they MUST Have a cake. I love the cake cutting animation so much I insist on it) and I like for them to at least bother with having the guests sit down. I never use the 'get married' pie menu interaction - not since I realised that it skips the whole bloody wedding! So they have to have the arch, and I like to have a nice fun reception.

When I've built the church, I find I sometimes need to wait a little longer - and hopefully the bride isn't expecting. It's a PAIN with pregnant brides, because the children don't carry their father's surname (if it's the couple's first child) even though mum and dad got married as quickly as possible (I have a lot of shot gun weddings in my smaller towns <cough>)

The church weddings are more formal, and the couple will spend a lot more since a priest will officiate, and there's usually a reception room where they can decorate to their heart's content for a truly beautiful wedding. I must give myself leisure to enjoy those more. Loste doesn't have a priest yet, so although the church is standing, no one can go to it. Greenbay Valley doesn't have a church yet - traditional or modern lol, but I'm working on it! It's coming together so much more quickly than my hoods normally do.

Names kind of vary. If I think a hyphen sounds good, they'll go with that. It also sometimes depends on whether I want to keep a certain name or family connection noted - such as the Curious clan who tends have women that hyphenate their names as a badge of pride. The Grunts not so much, although I think Klara Vonderstein will hyphenate her name since 'Vonderstein-Grunt' is quite nice sounding as opposed to Klara Grunt, and she's just that type of girl. Pascal and Nervous hyphenated their names, and so did Erin Beaker-Loner, mainly because of financial reasons, and her husband Ajay actually took her name and hyphenated his as well to match his wife and daughter. I love that family honestly. They're so adorable.

I let wants determine whether two sims will get married for the most part - but I do direct them to propose when an upstanding sim (General Grunt and Tank Grunt, I'm looking at you both) realises that he's going to be a father. Neither of them was particularly unhappy about their marriages, and I honestly feel that they thought it was the right thing to do want or no want. Other sims aren't really like that - they either roll the want, or they never do (cough - Frankie - cough) no matter how many children they have by their partner.

Aww thank you and also I wonder where I could get an invisible wedding arch haha. Sounds cool.

You let the dad adopt the child - he will have the dad's surname, but the mother will still be his mother. No mod needed - I have done that a number of times.

in my game, most couples got married immediately after engagement.
a few couples had a wedding party.

Usually about 3 seconds. Sometimes I skip the engagement part entirely and just used a hacked wedding arch...and in those cases sometimes the Sims don't even know each other. Like for arranged marriages or "mail order spouses." And sometimes, in age-modded games where I'm under no time pressure to get with the baby-making, I'll wait until marriage wants are rolled, since I'm generally a wants-based player, but even then I can get impatient, so...yeah, usually it's about 3 seconds. And the "wedding" often takes place in a bathroom and often one or both of the pair is in their birthday suit.

Even if I were the patient sort, I doubt I could be bothered to have "events" in the game, especially if it's a big neighborhood where lots of folks per rotation are getting hitched. Very occasionally I'll do an event, usually at the couple's home. But even then it's low-key without all the trappings of a big wedding and doesn't always involve a "wedding party." My personal aversion to "big event weddings" in real life may have some affect on my aversion to them in-game.

My version of a "quickie wedding" is a trip to town hall with just the sims or their household.

People whose sims propose marriage in the bathroom would probably be shocked at the production involved in one of my big weddings. I've built an entire community lot for a wedding. I once went to every single household of sims on the guest list and checked all their formal wear to make sure there were no clashes or repeats. If my sims' weddings don't take at least 2 RL hours to set up and play out, it's a quickie wedding.

Big weddings are fun.
I've crashed my game before with too many wedding guests.

But I also love weddings in real life, so . . . but see, I go to weddings as a musican, not a guest. I get paid to be there, I wear concert black because I'm working and that's what our trio wears (lazy, cheap, symphony musicians plus a pianist: pick any two and you won't be wrong), and generally I find that everyone is happy and having fun by the time the musicians are on site, and if they aren't, well, we're only paid for an hour rehearsal, says so in our contract so they're going to have to renegotiate with cash on hand if they want to go over . . . and darn sure one of us has another commitment.

Anyway, my sims do what they would naturally do. Some get married at home with a big party. Some get married at home with only family if any around. Some go to the courthouse. Some go to a church. Inge's summoner is deployed to ensure everyone who would have realistically come shows up, the formal wear sign is deployed to get the usual suspects to change into formal clothes, and if it's a garden wedding the house is locked to household only, and if it's an indoor wedding the kitchen is locked, or the fridge turned backwards. Because no, we do NOT help ourselves to chips from the fridge at a wedding. Show some class, simmies, show some class. Get chips from the buffet!

I did once by having 52 sims.

my Game crashed at ~ 50 Sims also. but then all the computers that I play on are not supposed to be able to play Sims.

to the question at hand.
How long my Sims are typically engaged for:

Less than the time it will take for you to read this following paragraph. My reasons being that for the majority of my sims are the ancestors to the current living generation and it is part of setting up the hood family lines. This is in my main hood which is an amalgamation of all the Sims from the PC and PSP games, my own custom sims, the hood building group's Sim populus and other assorted sims. I skip over the engagement portion of the relationship due to such high numbers, however I do take the time to otherwise look after these soon to be deceased sims. They may not get to have a long life or long engagement but in it they can see their own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren get engaged and married as well. I can constantly watch the engagement interactions though, see them both probably around 200 times each.

I don't think that I have a single Sim couple who are engaged currently.

See, that's precisely why I DON'T like big weddings! Brings back terrible, awful, very bad memories of the bridezillas (and their even-worse mothers) that I had to deal with -- Yes, me, because I ALWAYS ended up being the "business manager" because I don't take crap from people -- when I did string quartet gigs when I was in music school. Hell, I tell you, HELL! Bar/Bat mitzvahs, on the other hand? Awesome! Thankfully, it was in NYC, so lots and lots of bar/bat mitzvahs.

*ahem* Yeah, anyway. Big weddings suck. Real life or the game. Suckage. S'why my second wedding was at a courthouse with just two witnesses.

That being said, I do seem to have a terrible fondness for wedding dresses in-game. I have...a LOT of them. I mean, no one ever really wears them, but I HAVE them, and sometimes I'll dress up a Sim in one just to look at it and sometimes take pics that I then Photoshop. Must be the 8-year-old girl in me, the one who thought it'd be awesome to have a big, splashy wedding.

All of you "big weddings are fun" simmers are total gluttons for punishment. *chaos*

While I absolutely love sim weddings, I tend to keep them pretty small. Whereas, I loathe going to real life weddings (which is why my own one about 14 yrs ago was no fuss and quick as could be) as they always seem never ending...especially when you factor in evening receptions.

However, I'm the same way about kids. Totally love playing sim ones, but am not even remotely close to being a kid person in real life. Hard pass. The only two children I can even tolerate are my niece and nephew...who I love to pieces. But, they're also super smart and not whiny which might play a factor. So, yeah, real life interest definitely do not always translate to game-play style/interest.

I think you mean "funishment."

The thing about a big sim wedding is that it's only as much work for the player as the player chooses to put into it. Mine are about 0 effort. The only prep I have to do is blocking the refrigerator with the buffet, placing the arch, deciding if the party size justifies "renting" a portapotty, and maybe setting up chairs. Sims are just as happy, often happier, to stand during the vows and there's no prolonged staged ceremony with processions down the aisle. I don't care if anybody's formalwear matches or clashes; they all just wear whatever their formals are, including the principals. I don't distinguish between ordinary formal wear and wedding dresses. I don't care if the sims who ought to show up that I have to teleport in because the person calling the wedding hasn't met them (i.e., parents/siblings of the other party) get into their formals or remain in their street clothes.

The only things I care about are that the wedding happens and I have fun, and at most of my weddings, enough of the guests like each other that I don't have to do a thing to get the party going. Even when I've had to do some teleporting, a couple of introductions is usually enough to get things rolling. Kids dance on their relatives' feet, toddlers wander around underfoot asking for attention and eventually take themselves off home when their needs get low, siblings and college friends find each other and start tossing footballs, the in-law nobody likes generates fights that gather huge cheering crowds, the two guests who happen to be wearing the same gowns do synchronized slapdancing, the shy cousin plays fetch with the dog, I fall off my chair laughing, and then the guests wander off home leaving the happy couple with a "great wedding party" memory and a mess to clean up. But even the mess isn't that big a deal, because every family has a Virgo somewhere who happily spends the event washing dishes.

Funny enough Weddings are the only parties I throw on a regular basis. I don't have a chapel or anything, my Sims even have their dates at home, so why should weddings be different, plus I couldn't accept Townies budding in on the wedding. So all weddings take place at home, often before the young couple even gets to furnish the place.
The guests are slowly and painfully coaxed towards the wedding arch, then there's the wedding, then I make sure that the newly weds get to know each other's families.
Then I put the game on fast forward until the party is over.

Clearly the sort of families who spring for real live musicians out here are profoundly different than the ones who spring for real live musicians in NYC! And I'm the business manager--because I'm the one who had the bright idea . . .

I tend to get my sims engaged while they're in college 95% of the time. I build their relationship up through their Freshman and Sophomore years and let one of them pop the question in their Junior year. Since they can't get married in college (If they can then it proves I'm a dunce. If not, if there's a mod out there let me know!) I wait until they both graduate and move into their first house. They then get married as soon as they step out of the taxi because I can't handle having to manage a wedding, only if I really feel like going through the trouble . So I would say my sims stay engaged for about a year in sim time.