USC Marrying fiancee in Vietnam

[BinhJerome 14]

Hello!

Can someone share their experience with me?

I heard USC marrying in Vietnam is a very complex process from a bureaucratic perspective.

Below are some questions I have:

1. How long did it take?

2. What can be done ahead of time to expedite the process

3. What kind of evidence did you produce indicating you were single? How did you obtain it?

4,. What pitfalls can I avoid?

Any information would greatly be appreciated

It takes about a month, it is a pain in the #######, but there are services that will help and speed the process up they are about $300. I know a man from England who tried to marry a woman from Vietnam about 8 months ago and they were denied! His fiancee lived in the countryside not HCMC and I guess they are much more particular, he said everything went well at the wedding interview but they denied their petition. After hearing that, I would be livid, but what can you do it is Vietnam.

As far as expedite the process, get all your information filled out prior to your arrival, then when you arrive try to arrive in the morning and go to the hospital right away, pay extra and you will have to only answer a few questions for your sanity test and they will get you the results back asap (a few hours later that day) Also hire the service, this way they can check everything over and make sure everything is right, also she will need to get alot of things and this service as I said will make sure everything is good to go before you arrive, then all you need to do is take the mental exam and then file, then the marriage interview.

Hope this helps

Jerome and Binh

[BinhJerome 14]

1. Start to finish, Mid July-Mid November

2. Get familiar with the apostille process in your State. The bureaucracy is not just in Vietnam. For each document provided, you need a notarized copy, an apostille packet, and a Vietnam consulate packet before you go to Vietnam to file.

3. In my case I needed a: certified copy of my divorce decree from my county clerk, a "no marriage records" document from my State Vital Statistics office, both of those documents needed apostilles, then they were both sent to the VN consulate in San Francisco and sent back to me with the Consulate stamp on them. Then I took them to Vietnam.

4. We first went to the marriage registration office in HCMC and tried to do it ourselves, but graft was rampant and we didn't want to deal with it, so we hired a VN attorney for 200usd who took care of everything for us and got us our marriage certificate in 4 months. The best 200 I ever spent because while she may have had to pay money to someone, I never heard about it and because it would have had to come from her fee, I'm sure she didn't spend any more than it must take regardless. Before we hired the attorney we were getting the runaround, do this, do that, come back tomorrow, etc. It was very stressful on our new marriage so it was a blessing to hand it over to someone else to deal with, for such a bargain price.

Good luck,

R

Mine didnt require any apposiles, I did have to go to the US embassy and sign an affadavit, but everything else was just notorized when I got it done, and everything needed to be translated as well