You could join a community, meet some players and see who they plan to create in-game and plan a marriage with a player rather than an NPC?

I don't think there will be such a service. A player character will have to meet and woo a potential mate in person.

An option for long-distance communication is Discord, but there will be issues of trust involved in that. Your best option with respect to Discord is to select a server first, then lurk in or participate in the Discord channels of the kingdoms and other domains of that server to find at least one that suits you.

Your chat experience in other games will not likely be duplicated in CoE. Chat will be local, except for family chat.

I do hope some players take up the work as matchmakers, not sure if they can keep track on the unwedded npc but listing some willing players and their traits is doable.

I assume there will be some sort of directory. If not, discord or the forums.

just like it was in the real world, communities aka settlements are quite small and far appart, so for lots if not the huge majority of our characters, their world is going to be rather small.

Your settlement, maybe your county and for a few your Duchy. That's not that many characters, so you'd probably know quite fast all the potential suitors without the need for a matchmaker. At least for commoners, if you rise up the social ladder some other considerations may enter the equation and require some more exploration and work to find that proper suitor, but for most of the players it will be a question of who are the characters of roughly the same age as mine in my area that are not yet married.

You will have a lot of time to make friends, and find someone special ;)

I’m actually usually thankful that a lot of the community, I’ll never run into, in game. I don’t know what they’re planning as far as something like this but I would figure it’d be up to you to seek a partner. Whether that’s walking around town like a player or posting ads. :P I wonder if there are any PCs that would play matchmaker or if you could ask at a settlement “town hall” to review any records? Huh... never thought about that.

As someone who will only be marrying in-game for game mechanic reasons, I get where you are coming from. However, what you are asking for probably wouldn't fit into the "spirit" of what CoE is trying to do.

However, assuming you are focused on an NPC marriage, and depending on what your focus/intent for the marriage it - just pick an NPC and start earning favor.

Or, as you mentioned, create an alt and marry them (I will be most likely be going this route). That way you have a decent amount of control over the traits they would bring to the table for producing children.

EDIT:

ElyriaMingle.com is/was/will be a real thing. The site's still there, but I think it has been unofficially/officially shut down.

the correct url is elyrianmingle , its still active and the owner is a member of Fehuᚠ from the days of kickstarter when arthos was still a kingdom

It's all well and good marrying an npc. Just be prepared for a shock if someone sparks into them after the fact. It'll be like a sudden and traumatic personality change!

They used to help me in the garden and make the best cakes. Now all they do is jump around town in their pants and try to steal stuff badly....

I don't believe anyone can spark into someone locked into your family - as long as they are in your family. You obtain codes to provide for any children produced (though I don't know how far along the tree that applies).

Now, whether they can "seduce" your spouse away from you might be a whole different topic.

Elyrian Love Finder exists so far lol.

I'm more interested in whether or not titled people would be able to arrange marriages (between NPCs). For example, a Duke arranging a strategic marriage between an NPC count and countess, like in Crusader Kings.