Legal side of Wedding in the Philippines
When our clients ask us about the marriage certification or licensing regarding their wedding in Palawan, our first question is whether they are both Filipino citizens or not.
Getting married in the Philippines is reasonably straightforward if you’re both citizens. We advise those couples to simply visit the local registrar for the province in which you live for the required paperwork you need to get your marriage license. It’s best for the couple to investigate these matters themselves, especially since a number of personal documents have to be provided in order to get your marriage certificate. (*want to have a Catholic wedding in the church? click here to download our pdf document outlining local Catholic requirements for priest to perform the ceremony)
However, if the couple are both foreign citizens, or even if the bride or groom is Filipino but the couple intend to reside overseas for an indefinite period of time, then often the most convenient way to go about this is to actually make civil arrangements in the country in which you plan to live together prior to your Palawan wedding. Then all you have to do is bring a certified copy of your marriage certificate from your home country for the ceremony officiant to sight on the day. If after those civil arrangements are made and you want your marriage recognised by the Philippines if you want to register your marriage with the government of the Philippines simply contact or refer to the Philippines consulate in your country. Then you can report the marriage to the Philippines government.
Regarding the ceremony of your wedding, there are a few considerations to make. First, it is the responsibility of the couple to organise their own marriage paperwork, and you'll find this is common whether you approach other wedding planner and coordinators or even the resorts you plan to host your wedding.
However if you do really want to pursue the legal and official side of things being done in the Philippines, regardless of your citizenship, it can be arranged but may require additional research with the relevant authorities and Local Civil Registrar (LCR) where the Filipino spouse habitually resides, and it can take 2 weeks from the day you apply at the LCR to get your marriage license. Please note, at times things in the Philippines can take longer than expected. If you go this path, you may have to arrive in the Philippines much before the actual wedding date to go down this path. The wedding then has to be within 120 days of application for that marriage license (*current at the time of writing). Also, usually citizens of other countries would also have to obtain a License to Marry from their government or consulate, which basically provides a form of evidence that the spouse-to-be is not currently married to someone else and therefore is free and able to get married to the bride-to-be. Again, we don’t provide this service for couples (we don’t make the rules), so it’s something they have to do themselves, and speaking to your Local Registrar and Consulate is the best place to start to do it properly.
So all in all, if you're planning to all the legal paperwork in the Philippines, since due to the various differences in requirements for overseas couples we prefer to refer you to the correct authorities to inquire about the steps needed if conducting all legalities in the Philippines. For example, a recent client of ours is from Australia and therefore we recommended to make a start in researching by communicating with the Philippine consulate/embassy website in Australia. Ultimately, we leave it to the couple to decide what to do. The most important consideration to make first is whether their preference is to complete all of their civil marriage arrangements in the Philippines, or if they intend to reside overseas then we typically recommend that the couple make civil arrangements in their home country prior to or after their wedding celebrations in Palawan.