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Marriages

Where can I marry?

Can I register my overseas marriage in England and Wales?

No, overseas marriages may not be recorded at a register office. However, you may apply to have your overseas marriage documents, with translations if necessary, sent from the country where you were married and deposited with the General Register Office providing the conditions below are met:

If you have any further queries regarding the information on this page please contact the Overseas Branch.

Conditions

• your wedding has to have taken place in one of the countries from which we can accept formal notifications. See the full list of countries below.
• one of you must be a British citizen - and only that person can apply to deposit the details.

Creating a record

You can opt to arrange to create a record of your overseas marriage at any time after it has taken place there is no time limit. However, we only accept original documents, or certified copies issued by the foreign authority

• only the consul for the district where the marriage took place can send us the documentation
• we cannot release original documents once they are deposited with us

Please note this is not an automatic process, so you will need to arrange for this to be done.

Contacting you

Once the documents have been deposited, we will send you a letter confirming we have received them. Overseas marriage notifications are also made in the public indexes for research and certificate application purposes.

Obtaining copies

From this point on, we can issue certified copies of the documents which saves you having to contact the overseas authority in question. These always take the form of black and white photocopies of the material we hold, and are not presented in the form of a British-style marriage certificate. Such photocopies are issued under the seal of the General Register Office and are usually acceptable as evidence in just the same way as if they were certificates issued by the authorities of the country where the marriage originally took place.

For further information, please contact:

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Consular Directorate
Passport & Documentary Services Group
Old Admiralty Building
LONDON
SW1A 2PA

Tel: +44 (20) 7008 0186 (10am to 12pm Monday to Thursday)
www.fco.gov.uk

If you have any further queries regarding this information please contact the Overseas Branch.

Countries from which we accept formal notifications: