Getting Married

Getting married in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a requirement to continue beyond the first year of the game. If you choose not to marry, your character will leave Forgotten Valley at the end of year 1. Luckly, you can reload your last save state to reluctingly agree to terminate your single lifestyle.

There are a total of 8 marriage candidates. You can only marry one of them. The remaining candidates don't marry anyone else in the game (auu...)

Cecilia

Gordy

Gustafa

Lumina

Matthew

Molly

Nami

Rock

To marry, you can either proactively persue your preferred candidate or you can wait until the end of the year and have them ask you (i.e., a reverse proposal). The events you see during this courtship depends on how involved you want to be.

Raising Affection

The Resident Info page inside the game menu will display your relationship with the villagers. Underneath each villager's name will be your Friendship status, a 100-point bar is used to track necessary friendship for triggering events or receiving special gifts. The marriage candidates also have an Affection status underneath their portraits on the right side of the Resident Info page. This set of hearts displays your romance level with the candidates. You will begin the game with 0 hearts and work up to 10 hearts. These hearts are a factor when viewing romantic events or proposing marriage.

Raising romance hearts (and friendship) is mainly through daily conversations and giving gifts. Marriage candidates can be given multiple gifts per day, and they'll compliment you the next day when your presents were most excellent. Some candidates have extra ways to earn affection:

• Using your Watering Can, Sickle, and Hoe while taking care of crops on your farm will help to raise affection with Cecilia and Matthew.
• Visiting your mirror once per day to change your look (e.g., hairstyle, hair color, or outfit) will increase your Fashion Degree and raise affection with Gustafa, Lumina, Molly, and Rock.

In the original Harvest Moon version of AWL, the way to determine your relationship progress was to view the marriage candidates' diaries, located in the room where they sleep. While these diaries exist in the Story of Seasons edition of AWL, their usefulness has been replaced with the Residents Info. They're just in this game for nostalgia reasons.

Romance Events

Another way to increase affection is to trigger romance events. These are special scenes between you and a marriage candidate and will occur when you have a certain amount of hearts (or more) with the person. Respond positively during the event and you can boost your affection with the candidate.

Every marriage candidate has an introduction event (0 hearts), a 2-heart event, a 4-heart event, a 6-heart event, and an 8-heart event. Cecilia, Molly, and Nami have an additional 9-heart event because they did so in the original Gamecube game. During this 9-heart event, if you tell Cecilia "I love you, too!", or tell Molly "If you're okay with it, yeah", or tell Nami "Stay at my place", then you have confessed your love to that marriage candidate and no additional romance events with other candidates will occur. This doesn't mean you're stuck marrying them, though. If you choose any other response during the 9-heart events, then you can continue to see romance events with the other bachelors and bachelorettes.

You must view romance events sequentially once you have the minimum number of affection hearts to trigger the event. For example, you can't skip from the Introduction event to the 6-heart event; you have to first see the 2-heart event and the 4-heart event before you can get to the 6-heart event. Having more affection hearts than what the candidate's event requires is a-okay.

You can see one romance event per day for a specific candidate, but you can see multiple romance events on the same day if it is with multiple candidates.

Romance events can also trigger when you're riding the horse and happen to enter the area where the event will occur. Naturally, this won't work for events that are triggered when you walk into a building because the horse can't go inside. But for every outdoor area, riding the horse will not prevent events from happening.

The weather can change several times daily, impacting certain romantic events. For example, you may be on track to trigger an event requiring sunny weather, but it starts raining at 1:00 pm. Now the event won't happen until the weather clears up.

The Blue Feather

On Summer 1, you'll be summoned to the Nature Sprite tree, where you'll find Ace and Jack arguing about who gets to keep the Blue Feather they found. Hart tells them they can't keep it because it is meant for finding true love. He donates the feather into the blue recipient bin outside your farmhouse to stop the bickering. Takakura notices the feather and explains that the Blue Feather was used back in the day to propose marriage. The theory is that using the feather to propose will make you happy for the rest of your life.

You can keep the Blue Feather in your bag or the outdoor Storage cabinet. You can't throw the feather away, sell it to Van, or give it as a gift to non-marriage candidates.

Proposing Marriage

Now that you have the feather, you can propose marriage to any candidate who has 8 hearts of affection or more. You do not need to see all the romantic events to marry. Hold the Blue Feather in your hands and talk to the person you want to propose to. You'll get a short scene where they accept the Blue Feather. The next step is to wait until after you go to bed on Winter 10. The Blue Feather hand-off means you can't see any romance events for other candidates or any romance events you may have missed with your now-fiancé.

After handing over the Blue Feather, a special event will trigger the next day when you leave your house between 6:00 am and 3:00 pm. This engagement event will be your first outing as a formal couple. While this event will have an answer response to select during the cut scene, either choice will be okay. This event is not available if you decide to keep the Blue Feather to trigger a reverse proposal after you go to bed on Winter 10 of Chapter 1.

Reverse Proposal

If you haven't given anyone the Blue Feather by the time you go to bed on Winter 10, Takakura will visit to tell you he found someone wandering around outside. He's pretty sure you know who it is. Takakura will present you with a list of marriage candidates who have at least 6 hearts of affection and at least 70 points of friendship, regardless of how many romantic events you've seen with them. You MUST select someone from this list to continue the game.

The person you select will enter your house and ask if you want to get married. You can accept their proposal (and use your Blue Feather) OR tell them to go away. Accepting the proposal will start the yay-we're-married walk scene that would have naturally happened as though you gave them the Blue Feather before bedtime on Winter 10. Rejecting their proposal will end your Forgotten Valley authentic farmland experience.

Pre-Wedding Flight

Now that you've selected a spouse, it's time to retrieve and drag them back to the farm to live with you. A long scene will play with you and your new partner as you walk through the valley together, visiting everyone to announce your marriage. There are some subtle differences during this event, depending on who your sweetie is:

• If you are engaged to Gordy, Gustafa, or Matthew, visiting Romana's mansion will show Lumina simply standing off to the side. Suppose you are engaged to Cecilia, Molly, Nami, or Rock. In that case, the scene plays differently, as Lumina walks away after getting upset at the sight of you and your new spouse.
• When engaged to Gordy, the moment by the firework brothers' yard will show Daryl with an exclamation above his head as every one notices you walking down the hill. If you're engaged to anyone else, then Gordy will be the one to notice you and your new partner.
• If you are engaged to Gordy, Gustafa, Matthew, or Rock, visiting Tei and Lou at the Lei-Over Inn will include Nami. If you're engaged to Cecilia, Lumina, or Molly, and you've seen several of Nami's romance events, then you'll watch Nami leave and walk towards the exit out of the valley because she has run out of money to stay at the inn. Lumina and Molly's version watches this event from a distance to the west of the inn. Cecilia's version takes you right through the middle of the road from Vesta's farm, bumping into Nami as she walks out of town.

Once you finish walking through the valley, you'll return to the farmhouse with your new spouse and Takakura (for some reason). The farmhand will ask your new partner if they have a nickname they'd like to call you. This name can be 8 characters long, no spaces or punctuation allowed. This nickname cannot change once confirmed. You can type in your character's name or something more endearing like Hotbuns or Cuddles.

The Wedding

After you select a nickname, the three Nature Sprites call you outside and request that you and your new partner go to the Goddess Spring to see the surprise they set up. A romantic arch hangs over the pond, making a perfect spot for the two of you to exchange vows. Your other half will say a few sweet things to confirm their commitment to your life-long partnership.

The subject of expanding the family will come up. At this point, you can choose to have a boy, have a girl, or be happy with either one; in which case, the game will randomly select the gender of your mandatory child when you start Chapter 2, which happens right after this scene ends.

This wedding scene was added to the remake of A Wonderful Life. It did not exist in the original game.