love match

plural love matches · alternative love-match

1. A marriage, betrothal, or other romantic relationship which is based on a spontaneous mutual feeling of love by the two individuals in the relationship, as opposed to a relationship based on other reasons or an arranged marriage brokered by parents or by third parties.

   My second marriage, unlike my first, in which I became pregnant at 19 and married the man, was a love match from the start.

   2006 April 16, Sheila Kohler, “Modern Love: This Is Where the Dog Comes In”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 Jun 2014

   3 more examples

   He had . . . two daughters, one of whom still flourished in single blessedness, and the other, who was greatly more juvenile, made a love-match with a captain in the Forty-twa, who had no other fortune but his commission and a Highland pedigree.

   1816, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 2, in The Antiquary—Volume I

   "And this I can tell you, 'tis not the five villages she marries, nor the Duke, but the man. And 'tis not the fine lady he takes to his heart, but our Clo, and none other, and would have taken her in her smock had she been a beggar wench. 'Tis an honest love-match, that I swear!"

   1897, Frances Hodgson Burnett, chapter 27, in His Grace of Osmonde

   It was, beyond doubt, the year's strangest love match. This week in Moscow, Christina Onassis, 27, heir to her late father Aristotle's $500 million shipping, financial and industrial empire, is set to marry a Soviet citizen and Communist Party member.

   1978 August 7, “The Heiress and Her Comrade”, in Time, retrieved 14 Jun 2014