To get married in The Sims 4, build both the friendship and romance bars with your Sim’s love interest, ask them to be your partner, then choose Propose from the Romance > Relationship submenu; once engaged, pick Elope for an instant marriage or plan a wedding event for the full ceremony. The whole path works on PC, Mac, PlayStation and Xbox, since it lives entirely in the pie menu and the phone. Below we walk through each stage, explain what the Lovestruck expansion changed about the menus, cover the wedding options with and without My Wedding Stories, and flag the September 2026 bug fix that matters if your married Sims kept reverting to “partners”.
Build Romance Before You Propose
Proposals fail when the relationship is thin, so start with the two bars in the Relationships panel: the green friendship bar and the pink romance bar. Friendly socials (Get to Know, Tell Joke, Compliment) fill the first, and Romance socials (Flirt, Compliment Appearance, Embrace, Kiss and eventually WooHoo) fill the second. Community guides consistently put the practical threshold for a safe proposal around a mostly full romance bar with solid friendship, and both Sims being in a good mood helps every romantic interaction land. A Flirty Sim gets better odds still, so a shower or a romantic TV channel before the big moment is a cheap boost.
If you would rather skip the courtship, our Sims 4 relationship cheats guide has the console commands that set friendship and romance directly, on PC and console.
Before proposing, the couple needs to be official. Since the Lovestruck update reworked romance menus, the old “Ask to Be Boyfriend/Girlfriend” interaction is now Ask to Be Partner, and it sits in a Relationship submenu under Romance alongside Propose and Break Up. Player reports and community guides agree that Propose does not appear until the Sims are partners, so if the option is missing, that is the first thing to check.
Propose and Get Engaged
With the partner label in place and the bars high, click the other Sim, open Romance > Relationship and select Propose. The game plays a short scene, and if the relationship is strong enough the other Sim accepts and both become fiancés. A refusal costs a chunk of romance and a sad moodlet, so it is worth saving first if the bars are borderline.
One thing that changed since 2025: Lovestruck added a Romantic Satisfaction meter between partners, and the September 22, 2026 update (PC 1.128.90.1030, console version 2.39) rebalanced it so that satisfaction now decays slowly over time and no longer changes at all for inactive households. Maxis described the pre-patch version as too demanding (“Relationships take work, but maybe not that much work”). A neglected engaged couple can still drift, but it takes longer than it did.
Elope or Plan a Wedding
Once engaged, there are two routes to the vows:
- Elope. Click your fiancé and choose the elope interaction under Romance. The two Sims exchange vows on the spot, no guests, no venue, and are married within a minute of game time. This also works by clicking a base game wedding arch and choosing to get married under it.
- Plan a wedding event. In the base game, open the phone, pick Plan a Social Event, and choose the wedding event. You select the venue, invite guests, and complete goals like exchanging vows under an arch, cutting a cake and toasting. A gold-medal wedding rewards the household with a themed item.
With the My Wedding Stories game pack, the phone instead offers a dedicated wedding planning flow with several separate events (engagement dinner, rehearsal dinner, bach party, ceremony, reception and vow renewal), plus roles for the officiant, sim of honor, flower pal and ring bearer. The ceremony itself still ends with vows at an arch. The September 22, 2026 patch also fixed a pack bug where wedding venues downloaded from the Gallery were being placed as residential lots, so Gallery venues now arrive correctly typed and show up in the planner without a manual venue change.
Two NPCs cannot be married at all as of the current build. Verified against the June 30, 2026 patch notes, Raheel Kunal (Adventure Awaits) and Zhaleh Amani (Enchanted by Nature) can no longer be married, moved in or proposed to, because doing so duplicated them.
After the Wedding
Married Sims share a household once one moves in, and the game offers to move the new spouse in when the marriage completes if they lived elsewhere. Last names do not change automatically; edit them in Create a Sim if you want the couple to match. Expanded family trees from the February 2026 update now track in-laws and stepfamily, so a marriage shows up across both families’ trees rather than just the couple’s.
If your married couple kept turning back into “partners”, you hit a known bug rather than a relationship problem. The September 22, 2026 update fixed married couples being reverted to Partners whenever the household entered Create a Sim through Custom Tattoo planning or Plan Outfits; per Maxis, Create a Sim now reads marriage and engagement records directly and gives marriage priority. Update the game and the label sticks.
For the rest of the series, see how to get married in The Sims 3, and the Sims guide hub for our full Sims 4 coverage, including aging Sims up without cheats once the wedding leads to a family.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no Propose option on my Sim? Since Lovestruck, Propose lives under Romance > Relationship and only appears once the Sims are partners (Ask to Be Partner). Low romance or a bad mood can also hide it.
Do I need My Wedding Stories to get married? No. Eloping and the base game Plan a Social Event wedding both work without any pack. The pack adds the multi-event planner, extra roles and dedicated venues.
Can my Sim marry a Sim from another household? Yes. Propose works on any eligible young adult, adult or elder, and the game offers to move the spouse into your household once the marriage completes.
Why did my married Sims go back to being partners? That was a bug triggered by entering Create a Sim via Plan Outfits or Custom Tattoo planning. It was fixed in the September 22, 2026 update.
Can Sims get married on console the same way? Yes. The Romance menus, phone and event planner are identical on PlayStation and Xbox; only the console patch (version 2.39) lags the PC number.