Quote Originally Posted by DPZ2 View Post
Yes, it would be nice. Would more people purchase the bracelets? Enough to justify the changes? I'd probably do so, but only SE has the actual numbers to determine if this would be worth the resources.

And speaking of resources, all of those venues would still have to fit the theme (and the location) for the current Ceremony of Eternal Bonding. It is, after all, a highly scheduled event, and open world would not be possible. Something like the forest or pirates would be difficult to believe are part of the Temple of the Twelve.
tbf, their other mmo had weddings out in the open, no special place designated in an instance. In XI you could pay your gil (between 10k-80k) for the 3 main city-states areas or the chapel in Jeuno with prices depending on which location in the city-state, or you could pay a premium to have it at an area of your choosing: one of lakes in Zi'tah Sanctuary, Hall of the Gods, Kazham, Norg (for the perfect pirate wedding), etc. As long as your guests could get there and you had the necessary gil to do it, you could. Two popular places that are listed on the wiki for the old way are Bibiki Bay (tropical islands that are really quite beautiful) and Hall of the Gods, and both are listed at 240k gil. In a game where that kind of money was hard to come by if you weren't farming mats to sell... well. In the really early days, GMs used to officiate them as well. It's done by NPCs now, but the GMs doing so before was pretty neat.

They changed it from the old system to a newer system at the end of 2009, but it's still open world, at a set time and place. Doesn't look like there's gil involved anymore since obtaining it is much easier than back in the early days. You just put in a form for a date and time you want to "reserve" an area, figure out some decor, and you have yourself a wedding.

For XIV, adding a closed-off map area that's only enterable by having the invite to trade to a gatekeep on a highly-desired map would be pretty simple. Have it retain some of the sights from the map, such as, say, a forested waterfall in the Shroud, a desert oasis in Thanalan, a tropical island for Limsa, or on the moon with the world in the bg. They don't really have a way to do layered instances, seeing as how they don't have them beyond the numbered system we have now (for, say, "Mor Dhona has been built up already" for those who have completed ARR and "it's still in ruins mostly" for a fresh msq lv50 player... would really love if they'd figure that out) so doing that would require them to... actually do that but having a map area? Easily doable. Release areas after the heavy traffic has died down so wedding traffic doesn't add to people trying to get their msq done and it'd work just fine, I think.