Marriage customs say more about a people than most of their laws. Humans, predictably, show the greatest variety. Their unions are almost always officiated by priests or priestesses; ideally of the Goddess of Love, though any temple dear to the couple will do. The Temple of the Goddess of Light is common enough; Lady Luck’s clergy, less so, as few families wish to speak vows while thinking too hard about “chance.” Noble and royal weddings are grand spectacles: silks, banners, weeks of feasting, and guest-lists assembled less for affection than for alliances. Commoners wed more simply through shared meals, a borrowed courtyard, and neighbors as witnesses; in smaller villages, it is common for several couples to be joined at once when a priest finally makes their circuit. Human marriages tend to cluster in spring, summer, and autumn, when roads are passable and harvests either hoped for or are safely in.
Wood-aelvar do not speak of “marriage” so much as “bonding.” Their unions are marked by two ceremonies, one in each partner’s community, always in the fall when the forest turns and the year seems to slowing down. Family and clan elders officiate; gods are invoked, but the emphasis is on kin and village.
Dverger marry only on the summer solstice, which they treat as a people-wide festival of unions. The ceremonies take place outside their walls, under open sky, with the city’s clan council presiding. It is as if they must step beyond their rigidly structured lives for a moment to acknowledge that even they are not built entirely of it.
My own people, the high-aelvar, speak of our “life-bonding” in a way similar, but different, to the wood-aelvar. The rite is held in the temple at the mountain’s crown, with only close kin from each side in attendance. When the partners come from different villages or cities, the ceremony is always hosted by the community that will be losing a member; the logic is simple, if unspoken: they deserve the final farewell, as it could be centuries, if ever, before they see their family member again.
High-aelvar, wood-aelvar, and dverger who choose to live among humans usually adopt human forms while keeping the weight of their own marriage vows. Divorce, in any formal sense, is unknown among us and strictly forbidden. Courtship therefore typically stretches over decades, sometimes a century or more, as both sides make very sure they are choosing a partner that they will share the better part of a millennium with. Humans, by contrast, do permit separation, though it is frowned upon and typically requires the consent of the same temple that blessed the union in the first place. That is rarely given.
As for the pale-aelvar, I will only note that what Isha has shared of their “unions” resembles political contracts and obligations more than bonds of affection.
For the rest of us, however imperfectly we manage it, the ideal remains the same: marriage is a promise meant to endure until death, rather than by decree, war, or the whims of gods.
