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[Walkaboutout]

So, I haven't seen a marriage announcement and celebration message in...well, a long time. Over several games and forts over a period of time. I'm pretty sure my dorfs are indeed pairing off and marrying, but I just haven't seen a message to that effect in... forever.

I wondered if perhaps I had done something in one of my raw tweaking experiments, or if perhaps I had an old pre-packaged Ironhand Graphics version of my game where it had been disabled somehow. So, in order to eliminate that possibility, to a certain extent at least, I tucked my Fortress folder aside, and grabbed a fresh DF2012 download. I then grabbed the graphics only conversion (not the full packaged game version) for Ironhand and applied it.

I still don't get marriage announcements. I figure at this point that:
1) Something is either turned off perhaps in the Ironhand basic conversion stuff (which includes some settings of its own I've noticed, like music sound being disabled etc)
2) Marriage announcements were disabled in the game by Toady during an update (I don't think that's the case, to be honest, but don't know)
3) Something about the way I build my forts is perhaps preventing marriage parties from happening, or something like that.

But, before I post a debate about fortress design, I figured I'd ask about the other two thoughts that occurred to me based on this. Anyone have an ideas?

[VerdantSF]

I still get them, but because of random spam, sometimes they get overlooked.  A small meeting zone can increase marriages, but proceed with caution.  When I created a small memorial hall, I had a huge upswing in marriages... as well as close friendships.  After decades of natural deaths causing no issues, the friendships created by the memorial hall led to a tantrum spiral when 2 dwarves passed away in the Spring.  I lost 61 out of 134 dwarves.  Later, as an alternative, I created small burrows that I assigned specific potential couples to.  The micromanagement has limited its appeal, though.

[Walkaboutout]

Thanks for the info Verdant. That speaks directly to it being related to my fortress design. Lately I tend to have some pretty large meeting halls. Like 31x31 for the main dining hall, and then usually a secondary, constructed one topside thats usually like 20x20. Other than that, my early-years, and even mid-years, forts don't typically have any other gathering spots in them.

So, what I'm missing, is exactly what you described with your much smaller memorial hall. This may very well be related to my recent fortress setups then. Thanks again, I'll experiment with making a much smaller meeting area. And then, of course, probably watch the tantrum spirals destroy the place, but hey, that's a bridge I'll cross when I come to it!

[chevil]

You can tweak announcements.txt

[smjjames]

Yes, I got one of my two miners getting married a while back, they were two of my starting 7.  I've never seen a couple go for formal ceremonies though, anybody know what is required for a married couple to do a formal ceremony?

[VerdantSF]

I'm not 100% sure, but the few formal celebrations I've had were with dwarves that didn't have too many jobs enabled, so they were idle a lot in the party zone.

[Moriarty]

I'm pretty sure I've read here that it has to do with the dwarves' "admires tradition" trait.

[Ravendarksky]

I've never seen any messages relating to dwarf marrage.

Can someone post an example of what it looks like? I will need to include this in my DFMon tool.

[Larix]

The announcement that the dwarfs have married will always show up, whether there's a party or not. For a party to happen, you obviously need a meeting hall. I usually force dwarfs into shared bedrooms by disabling the meeting hall - they'll otherwise just oscillate between the hall and their own room, spending way too little time socialising with their partner to get anywhere. Consequently, most of my couples "forego a formal celebration".

[Quietust]

When dwarves get married, the "formal celebrations" are just a party, so if you don't have any places that dwarves can organize parties (i.e. no meeting halls - activity zones don't count), then they will never organize a wedding reception.

The actual message is "The [profession] [name] and the [profession] [name] have married. Congratulations!", followed by either "They have organized a wedding reception at [building]" or "They have decided to forego any formal celebrations".

[Zan Oltaridor]

I like how Friendship leads to extermination.