Marrying In Your New Country.

[clogged]

How many of us got married (or are planning to) in their "new" countries?

I would love to hear your compare/contrast stories about the logistics of the day. What was required? How long did it take for the license? Anything "weird" get required? Was the president of Germany your best man, assuming you were the 7th kid in your family, of course?

[popcorn]

Yep, DH and I got married in Spain.

There you can have a religious ceremony or a civil one and the requirements are different for both. I think a civil ceremony requires much more than a religious one.

DH and I are not really strong in any faith, but we had a Catholic wedding so we could marry in the church in his mom's town in Segovia.

I don't remember all the paperwork (blocking it out I suppose) but I do know I needed my Baptism certificate, birth certifcate, a signed note from my parents stating that I had never been married and was single -- free to marry. Oh, and we had to complete counseling through the Catholic church before we could marry.

In total I think I spent about 4 or 5 months on the whole process of getting paperwork, having things translated, doing the counseling, etc. It wasn't too much though.

[clogged]

I got married in the Netherlands.

They only allow residents to marry so we had to first establish that, then pay to get copies of it being established. Even though the exact same counter-lady at the exact same help desk did both. She basically copied the forms she herself wrote and filed, stamped them to notorize them, verified her own signature on the forms, and put them in a different manila folder. And charged us €20 for the honor. Gotta love red tape.

Next, we had to go to the city hall and approve the vows we selected, and sign a crap ton of legal documents about what our married names would be, that kind of thing. Our file got mailed to the city hall in the town we were going to be married in, and we had to repeat this step.

In all, it took 8 weeks from the day we applied to the day we got the license. And this was AFTER the 5 months of dealing with my records just to get permission to applybfor a license- we had to have them translated from English, and verified for accuracy. Took ages!

After we were free to marry, but we were required by law to have a justice of the peace wedding before we could have a church wedding. I think this is common in many European countries, right?

[bugabean]

We had a civil wedding in Denmark. On Wednesday, we went down to… well, what I guess is kinda like county hall. We told them we wanted to get married, showed them birth certs and "proof" that neither of us were already married. ("Proof" in quotes because I showed them a photocopy of the previous year's tax return, which wasn't even notarized or anything. Not sure how that proves anything, but I had no idea what else to show, and they were happy.) They asked "red or white wine?" We said "red." They said "come back Saturday at 11." Saturday at 11, a guy narrated a short history of marriage, asked if we wanted to do it, we said yes, signed a piece of paper, got two witnesses (DH's siblings) to sign, and then everyone got a glass of red wine. It took about seven minutes, cost no money*, and was pretty darn easy. They handed us a marriage license immediately. Two copies, actually, and they had Danish, English, and German all one page, so that was really nice for taking back to the States as proof of the marriage!

*There is a charge if both of you are foreigners, but since DH is Danish, it was free. I had never lived in Denmark at the time, btw. I was over on a holiday.

[aMrsin09]

We wanted to get married in Sint Maarten, but we got married in Australia.

Nothing was too unusual, aside from contacting vendors in different time zones.
The odd things:
Finding out how far behind Australia was with websites. I found far too many photographers, venues, bakers, florists that didn't even have pictures on the site. Just phone numbers saying "contact us for further information". Uhm, no. It's the 21 st century. post pictures of your freakin bouquets!

I also had HUGE trouble finding someone to come to the hotel and do my hair. I needed them there at 6 AM. This is outside of official trading hours in WA. AND NO ONE WOULD DO IT! I am now a client forever at the Tony and Guy Salon in Subieco because the woman came chasing out after me (she had to wait for the manager to leave) to get my info and she gave that to their "sub hairdresser" The "sub" didn't mind making a days wage before work even started.

As far as the celebrant/license etc, we had a family friend do it, so he took care of everything in Australia.

The BEST part was our venue. We got married at the Bell Tower in Perth. We had the whole thing to ourselves for about 2 hours for only $300. H thought this was highway robbery, but I know I would have paid in the thousands for the same place in the states.

[bugabean]

May 30, 2012 6:09:22 GMT -5 clogged said:

After we were free to marry, but we were required by law to have a justice of the peace wedding before we could have a church wedding. I think this is common in many European countries, right?

We had originally planned to have a church wedding in Denmark, and we wouldn't have had to do a civil wedding first. I have heard that it's common in other countries, though.

I don't know if it's a legal thing or a culture thing, but Danes have church weddings if they want a nice ceremony and they have civil weddings if they want something small and informal like what I described above. People don't have fancy outdoor weddings or weddings at other pretty non-church buildings and stuff like seems common in the States. I went to a church wedding this past weekend, and they had already had a civil wedding last year but decided they wanted the big to-do later and so they did it in the church, even though, being already married, they could have done ANYTHING they wanted and called it a party.

[aMrsin09]

Geez, I though you meant weird for the wedding.

There were a few ways we could get married. Do a Fiancee Visa, show up on tourist visa and get married, or get married outside of OZ and then apply. The atty said option A was the best , so we did all paperwork for that. We needed the letter saying I had never been married, medical clearance, etc etc. Typical stuff for a Visa. Once the atty submitted all that, we got the approval in 5 working days.

We then had 9 months to get married.

[Deleted]

We got married in France. First you have to publish the intent to marry at the city hall within a couple months of intending to get married. This requires a birth certificate, proof of residency for at least one partner, passport, certificate saying I'm not married, certificate saying that the US will recognize my marriage in the US. I also had to take a french language test so that they could be sure that I would not be unwittingly committing myself to my H against my will.

After the publishing of intent, I came back two months later and we had the civil ceremony. The mayor nicely had parts of it in English and French and the translator was very excited because it was her first time doing a wedding. I understood most of it, but they gave me a printout just in case. The ceremony took about 10 mins and then it was done.
I went back to the US and worked on the immigration papers and then came back a few months later for our church ceremony.

[singingpilgrim]

I'm not married yet, but I am getting married in India.

I have to go over on a tourist visa because I am not ethnically Indian. If I was, I could go in on an entry visa. India has no fiance visa.

After that, we'll get married by Ryan's pastor (we're both Christian). Because we're not Hindu, apparently there are special marriage laws. There's actually Christian laws, but they're mainly designed for Catholics (neither of us are Catholics) but his pastor has married lots of people before, so we'll trust him to guide us.

After we're married, I'll need to go to Delhi a lot, apparently, to get an entry visa instead of a tourist visa. I'm not really sure how it works, but it'll be complicated and will take a while, and I have to complete the process before my tourist visa (issued for 6 months from issue date) expires.

After we're married a year I can then apply for my PIO (person of Indian Origin) card. Funny name, I know. I'll be a person of Indian origin. Once I get that, THEN I'll be legally allowed to work. Up until then, we'll be living on Ryan's salary alone.

It's complicated, but simpler than if Ryan came to the US. And cheaper. And we'll go through it AFTER we get married, instead of before like in the US. So we can face the beaurocratic stuff TOGETHER.

[clickerish]

I can't, but if I could I would do forty thousand hoops

[popcorn]

May 30, 2012 6:33:58 GMT -5 @myblue said:

We got married in France. First you have to publish the intent to marry at the city hall within a couple months of intending to get married. .

We also had to post intent, but it was on the doors of our local church two weeks before the wedding.

[crimsonandclover]

We got married in Germany. There you have to have a civil ceremony and then can choose whether or not to have a church wedding sometime later. Most people do the civil ceremony and then have the church wedding a few days after. They told us that the paperwork (and there was a mountain of it) that I needed to get permission from the German courts to marry might take 3 months to process, and we wanted to get married in May. I started collecting the papers in October, got them officially translated (holy crap was that a buttload of money, and part of the reason I'd like to become an official translator), and turned them in in November. 2 weeks later we got our license. We were afraid it might expire if we waited too long to use it, and we didn't want to go through the process again, so we did our civil ceremony in December, continued living in our separate cities, and then had the church wedding in May as planned.

As for papers, I had to provide my residency registration, visa, visa permit (no, there is no difference. They asked twice for the same thing under different names and then called when only my visa was in my paperwork. I actually had to explain to the bureaucrat the different kinds of visas there are and how what they were asking for under two names actually only exists once.), birth certificate, and proof that I was single. I had my parents write an affadavit and get it notarized (my mom is a notary so she just got one of her notary friends to do it). There might have been some more papers, but I've blocked a lot of that out of my memory.

[allibally]

We got married in Switzerland. DH was Jon hunting before I arrived only looking for stuff in the Canton of Zurich. Because it was the only Swiss-German canton that allowed me to marry on a tourist visa.

I arrived and for the first month I was there we did nothing. He was working crazy hours. We started in August and got married September 10.

We had to go to this one office in the city. I don't remember what it was called. But basically we went in and they told us what we needed to do. We both had to order a new birth certificate because it couldn't be older than 6 months. I also had to go to the US Consulate and sign a paper saying I am not currently married. We filled out maybe one more sheet together and then went back to the building.

We then met with someone there. I don't really know what all happened because it was all in Swiss German. But they couldn't get why someone would want to marry so fast. We didn't have a of options for dates or venues. DH wanted to make sure we got a family book and I wanted to make sure we got an international license.

We basically got the earliest date possible at a location in Winterthur. About 20 minutes from us. It was in a really pretty building turned museum. They had gardens outside. The person who married us did a great job with saying everything in English and in German.

For the wedding it was very low key. I order a smaller and less poofy dress and my mom mailed it to me. The top was too big and we frantically made calls to places across the boarder to get it altered. We drove to where the wedding was going to be held to check it out before hand. And them drove to Konstanz on the Bodensee because we wanted to eat in Germany. We drove there again to try a restaurant. I did my own hair, make up and nails. I scouted my bouquet at neighborhood place. They did a really nice job.

And now I wrote a book. Sorry. Basically my experience wasn't too hard. We only had a civil ceremony. You do the church ceremony later. My family wasn't able to come as it was really short notice. I regret that and I know my mom does too. We still plan to have a church ceremony. It probably won't be till 2 and a half years after we married. I know some people frown upon that. But we just aren't able to do it another way. My family really wants to see it happen. I rally feel unsettled because we never really celebrated with my family and I want to have a church ceremony too.

[cricketwife]

I got married in the US, but I want to play too!

We went the route of a K-1 (fiance) visa and getting married in the States. Shortly (a couple of weeks, if I remember) before the wedding, I applied for the marriage license in SC. They REFUSED to issue it without a SSN. As you ladies know, you can't get an SSN, without first being MARRIED to a US citizen (if you're going that route, I know there are other ways to get a greencard, etc.). It was a ridiculous catch-22.

I was on the phone with this lady in podunk SC, saying, "Ma'am, I'm not sure if you understand. Our federal government has issued my fiance a visa called a K-1 visa. It gives him permission to enter our county, but only under the condition that he marries me. He's not even allowed to marry someone else. He must marry me under this visa status." She said, "I don't think you understand. You can't get married in South Carolina. We have this problem all the time. You can't get married here."

First of all, the county that I was dealing with was hardly a thriving metropolis, so it was hard to believe that they have this problem "all the time." But whatever. I was in tears and had to scramble to relocate my wedding to North Carolina, where they were very happy to issue a marriage license.

[Deleted]

We got married at the Wynn in Las Vegas, so it was a wedding in our new country and a destination wedding all in one

As far as paper work, we pre-registered online for the marriage license when we were 60 days out and then showed up at the clerk's office two days before the wedding with our SSNs and IDs to pick it up, and voila, ready to party!

There were no hitches at all. I don't know much about the requirements in Italy, especially as far as civil ceremonies go, but I'm guessing it's a lot more complicated than pre-register -> pick up license -> get married.

The wedding in its entirety was a breeze to plan and a complete success. Our wedding coordinator and the rest of the staff at the Wynn wedding dept delivered beyond our expectations. Our minister performed beautifully even if we had exchanged a mere few emails.

A special detail would be that we invited the Obamas! They replied with a beautiful congratulatory card that I must get around to framing.
We also invited Mickey and Minnie and received a little poster signed by Cinderella and Prince Charming... LOL!

Edited for typos

[clogged]

Remember Amoro? She got married in Italy. It was a nightmare paperwork wise!

[frlcb]

May 30, 2012 11:32:08 GMT -5 cricketwife said:

I got married in the US, but I want to play too!

We went the route of a K-1 (fiance) visa and getting married in the States. Shortly (a couple of weeks, if I remember) before the wedding, I applied for the marriage license in SC. They REFUSED to issue it without a SSN. As you ladies know, you can't get an SSN, without first being MARRIED to a US citizen (if you're going that route, I know there are other ways to get a greencard, etc.). It was a ridiculous catch-22.

I was on the phone with this lady in podunk SC, saying, "Ma'am, I'm not sure if you understand. Our federal government has issued my fiance a visa called a K-1 visa. It gives him permission to enter our county, but only under the condition that he marries me. He's not even allowed to marry someone else. He must marry me under this visa status." She said, "I don't think you understand. You can't get married in South Carolina. We have this problem all the time. You can't get married here."

First of all, the county that I was dealing with was hardly a thriving metropolis, so it was hard to believe that they have this problem "all the time." But whatever. I was in tears and had to scramble to relocate my wedding to North Carolina, where they were very happy to issue a marriage license.

This is bizarre! We got married in GA (and we were living in the UK, and my dh is British) and there were no issues. Sounds like SC needs to make some changes!

[GilliC]

I'm getting divorced in my new country. Can I play?

I downloaded a 2-page "Application for Separation" form from the county government's website and filled it out. Basically names, birth dates, address, and information on children (none). We each signed it and we each needed two witnesses to sign it. Then we mailed it in with photocopies of our Texas marriage certificate and our resident visas. A few weeks later we each got a letter saying that we were legally separated, and one year from the date on the letter we are eligible to apply for a divorce. If we decide to get back together in that year, we need to contact the county government to let them know.

In October, we will fill out a similar two page form, and then we will be divorced.

The one-year waiting period sucks a lot, but I love it that we don't have to hire lawyers or pay fees or anything, and the whole process is simple and straightforward. If we have trouble dividing our assets, we can make an appointment with the county government for arbitration at no charge!

[allibally]

May 30, 2012 13:42:39 GMT -5 clogged said:

Remember Amoro? She got married in Italy. It was a nightmare paperwork wise!

No that was the other girl... Amoro didn't like Italy when she lived there.

[Deleted]

May 30, 2012 13:42:39 GMT -5 clogged said:

Remember Amoro? She got married in Italy. It was a nightmare paperwork wise!

Nightmare would be the word. I imagine it would be even harder for a non-Italian than it would for me but nonetheless I'd expect nothing less than a nightmare from the land of the complicated.

[frlcb]

May 30, 2012 18:00:01 GMT -5 allibally said:

May 30, 2012 13:42:39 GMT -5 clogged said:

Remember Amoro? She got married in Italy. It was a nightmare paperwork wise!

No that was the other girl... Amoro didn't like Italy when she lived there.

But DON'T call it a destination wedding. It was so NOT a destination wedding. Her husbands family was from there, like 100 years ago, so clearly it was NOT a destination wedding. At all. Ever.

[expatjen]

I had a traditional Indian Hindu wedding and a non-traditional wedding in Hawaii. I didn't have a clue what was going on for he Indian wedding and just went with the flow. We had to register our marriage with the local authorities a few week after (along with non-related witnesses). I married while on a tourist visa, then was able to register with the local police as a resident. From there I was able to stay in India over the 6 month limit for tourists. After a few years of marriage, I was then eligible to apply for a PIO card, which I did at the consulate in San Francisco (it took 2 weeks vs. the 2-6 months it takes to process in India).

[Deleted]

May 30, 2012 19:00:25 GMT -5 frlcb said:

May 30, 2012 18:00:01 GMT -5 allibally said:

No that was the other girl... Amoro didn't like Italy when she lived there.

But DON'T call it a destination wedding. It was so NOT a destination wedding. Her husbands family was from there, like 100 years ago, so clearly it was NOT a destination wedding. At all. Ever.

LOL - I love this. Must have been good times

[cailinabroad]

I wanna play! DH and I first planned to get married in Germany, but once we started looking up the process, we got kind of spooked. Plus we heard all sorts of horror stories about how hard it is for bi-national and non EU citizens to get married there. A bi-national couple suggested that we try Denmark, and that was our plan until we realized DH wouldn't have enough time off before my visa expired. So I flew back to the States and we decided we'd just save ourselves the hassle and get married in America. Court house, signatures, drivers licenses. Done

[clickerish]

May 30, 2012 19:00:25 GMT -5 frlcb said:

May 30, 2012 18:00:01 GMT -5 allibally said:

No that was the other girl... Amoro didn't like Italy when she lived there.

But DON'T call it a destination wedding. It was so NOT a destination wedding. Her husbands family was from there, like 100 years ago, so clearly it was NOT a destination wedding. At all. Ever.

I LOVE THIS. Why are these people so obsessed with family history. You sailed over. Get on with life!

[mouseinlux]

I got married in Lux, we both had to have a blood test, doctor check up and a TB test. We had to provide certified copies of our birth certificates that were no older than 3 months old (that was fun). I had to have mine translated. I also had to post my "bands" at the English embassy for a month I think to proved that I'm not married.
We got married in our town hall then in the church the next day as we're one of the countries that requires a civil service before a church.
I didn't have any issues with residency or visas as I'm already an EU citizen and I'd already been in Lux a number of years

[clogged]

Reading the banns or posting them is sooooo lame. Like someone is going to spend every waking moment contacting every parish/city hall in the UK on the off chance they need to break up an invalid marriage.

edit to add: Or where ever, not just the UK

[elenetxu]

This is one time when I say thank goodness for the church's influence in Spain.

The paperwork, compared to other Spanish processes, was fairly easy. The priest helped me a lot more than he needed to - being a protestant and a foreigner made things complicated but we got it all done on the first try.

I love how in Spain the restaurant takes care of the flowers, decoration, printing menus and the seating charts, etc. So much less stress than back home!! The problem? The idiot florist loaded my bouquet with calla lilies even though I said I hated them. Oh Spain.