Getting married in Manila

[dave01 16]

The one other thing that should be pointed out is the fact that you should apply in the city of your wife's residence and the problem you can run into in Manila is that some of the cities there will not recognize the Legal Capacity issued by the embassy and they will not get a marriage license from them.

"The American citizen must then obtain the affidavit of legal capacity upon arrival in the Philippines and file it immediately with the civil registrar where the fiancée applied for the marriage license"

I should have been a little clearer in my post so will do so now. Some of the cities in the NCR ( National Capital Region ) will NOT ENTERTAIN the marriage between a US citizen and a filipina. If the girlfriend is from one of these cities they will have to apply else where. Two of the cities that will reject you for sure are Makati and Quezon City. I'm only submitting this so they don't waste their time going there.

[sjr09 155]

I should have been a little clearer in my post so will do so now. Some of the cities in the NCR ( National Capital Region ) will NOT ENTERTAIN the marriage between a US citizen and a filipina. If the girlfriend is from one of these cities they will have to apply else where. Two of the cities that will reject you for sure are Makati and Quezon City. I'm only submitting this so they don't waste their time going there.

Fiancée

Fixxord

[jhonster 23]

Good morning. Well, that's great if she can go with you inside. Yes, of course you will need your marriage license for the civil wedding. My pastor was the one who officiated our wedding. The city mayor or a judge can perform the marriage and they hold office at the city hall. You may please ask any of the staff when you apply for marriage license.

Places for honeymoon? Please check this website www.villaescudero.com or canyonwoods.com

Congrats on your wedding.

Good morning. Well, that's great if she can go with you inside. Yes, of course you will need your marriage license for the civil wedding. My pastor was the one who officiated our wedding. The city mayor or a judge can perform the marriage and they hold office at the city hall. You may please ask any of the staff when you apply for marriage license.

Places for honeymoon? Please check this website www.villaescudero.com or canyonwoods.com (you can book online)

Congrats on your wedding.

Ok. Update. We went to the American Embassy this morning & I got my "Legal capacity to Marry" cert & we then went to Manila City Hall to file for the marriage certificate. We filled out the paper work & paid the 120 pesos. Had to take a "Pre marriage counseling" class before they would sign our application to file for the marraige license. The interesting thing was, the lady that was helping us fill out the application was telling us that we needed to pay a 4000 peso fee after we completed the class (an obvious scammer). When we took the "Pre-marriage counseling, the lady there told us DO NOT pay a dime to this lady that works in this office. And she said we should go to the 4th floor and report her for doing so. Still not sure what to do with that whole scenario.

But anyways....we got the receipt and everything and are going back March 18th to pick up our Marriage license.

Now my question. About who can marry us and what the cheapest and best way is to do this. We were planning on just having a civil wedding at the courthouse with a judge and then planning to have a big reception party March 23rd (I leave to go back to the states March 31st).

They told us that we needed to write a letter to the presiding judge to apply for "solemnization of marriage". The reason for a letter to the presiding judge is that this is a raffle process where I have to include 2 photo copies of the marriage license & the application for marriage license. I guess this raffle is held every Thursday & is basically how you'd get a judge to marry you for the 300 peso fee.

Anybody ever gotten a married this way? Just curious.

Thanks again everyone for your valuable input =))

[G & V 3]

Ok. Update. We went to the American Embassy this morning & I got my "Legal capacity to Marry" cert & we then went to Manila City Hall to file for the marriage certificate. We filled out the paper work & paid the 120 pesos. Had to take a "Pre marriage counseling" class before they would sign our application to file for the marraige license. The interesting thing was, the lady that was helping us fill out the application was telling us that we needed to pay a 4000 peso fee after we completed the class (an obvious scammer). When we took the "Pre-marriage counseling, the lady there told us DO NOT pay a dime to this lady that works in this office. And she said we should go to the 4th floor and report her for doing so. Still not sure what to do with that whole scenario.

But anyways....we got the receipt and everything and are going back March 18th to pick up our Marriage license.

Now my question. About who can marry us and what the cheapest and best way is to do this. We were planning on just having a civil wedding at the courthouse with a judge and then planning to have a big reception party March 23rd (I leave to go back to the states March 31st).

They told us that we needed to write a letter to the presiding judge to apply for "solemnization of marriage". The reason for a letter to the presiding judge is that this is a raffle process where I have to include 2 photo copies of the marriage license & the application for marriage license. I guess this raffle is held every Thursday & is basically how you'd get a judge to marry you for the 300 peso fee.

Anybody ever gotten a married this way? Just curious.

Thanks again everyone for your valuable input =))

We got married in Antipolo city a few months ago and didn't have to write a letter to the judge. Not surprisingly, it seems the process works a little differently from city to city so I'm not sure if I can help much but I'll summarize what happened for us.

• We got our marriage license from the Antipolo civil registrar and then they submitted us into the raffle to get a judge. I was nervous about the raffle aspect, but we got chosen a week later.
  
• We were assigned a judge and given the office number.
  
• We went to that office in the courthouse. They were friendly and gave us the available dates/times when we could come back for the wedding and we picked a time.
  
• The civil wedding went smoothly. The judge, my wife and I, and some of the witnesses signed several (I think 4) copies of the marriage certificate.
  
• The court house sent the marriage certificate to the registrar for the final set of signatures/stamps and then we returned (a week?) later and picked up our 1 copy. At this point or before, you should ask them when you will be able to get your official marriage certificate from the NSO - since they have to send a copy to the NSO and this can sometimes take months. You may be able to pay to speed up the process. We did not know about this at the time but we were able to get our marriage certificate from the NSO 2 months later.
  

As a side note, I recommend photocopying or scanning every document you get. Because some (like marriage licence and affidavit from Embassy) you will turn in and may never see again. You won't necessarily need these for the visa process, but better safe than sorry. Since we didn't have to write to the judge, I can't help you there, just make sure you're clear on what you're supposed to do - if not, contact them again and clarify. You might want to call the judge's office ahead of time as well since they may tell you something different. Things can take a lot of time in the Philippines and you're on a somewhat tight schedule.