In poems and epithalamia (‘wedding songs’) betrothal is also presented as being something contracted by the family, with the single exception of Sigibert and Brunhild's marriage in Venantius Fortunatus's epithalamium. This difference is presumably so because of Sigibert's position as a king. Girls are expected to have no particular agency in the decision concerning who they marry, but the idealisation that occurs in epithalamia and poetry emphases their approval of the match, their consent to the marriage and their desire for their betrothed. Thus, Venantius Fortunatus's commemoration poem for the deceased Vilithuta discusses her betrothal to her husband as a wonderful occasion which occurred that she was 13 years old. The fact of her marriage is constructed with her as a passive actor, but Venantius portrays her as desiring her husband as a person, and wanting their marriage: ‘united and given into the care of a man she desired’. There is a subtle suggestion that she is lucky to be given a suitor of whom she approves but it is clear that this poem presents an ideal in which Vilithuta wants to marry her husband as an individual that she likes and desires.

An identical theme is seen in his epithalamium for Sigibert and the Visigothic princess Brunhild. This poem was one of the first works, along with a panegyric, that Venantius presented upon his arrival at Metz from his Italian home, and is therefore a demonstration of his successful attempts to ingratiate himself into the Merovingian court. It can also be assumed from the timing that Venantius had no knowledge of the events that led up to the marriage. Nonetheless he valiantly constructs a detailed set of scenes in which Sigibert is struck with an overpowering sexual and emotional love for Brunhild that transcends both the distance and the seas that separated them. ‘Sigibert, in love, is consumed by passion for Brunhild’ Venantius unsubtly writes. They are both depicted as longing to be together as a married couple, set against an overtly classical backdrop of a spring garden, representing fecundity and harmony. This bears no relation at all to Gregory of Tours's description of the contracting of their marriage, in which he presents Sigibert as wishing to outdo his brothers, who were marrying slaves and women of low birth, and instead find a royal wife.