Marrying overseas - Food
for thought for Australian couples
Despite what you might read elsewhere, an Australian
marriage celebrant cannot perform a legal marriage
ceremony in Bali or any other country and then register
the marriage back in Australia. Marriage is
regulated by the laws of the place where the legal
ceremony is performed. So, though an Australian
celebrant may travel overseas for your ceremony, the
ceremony will have to be a non-legal one. And if you
wish to have your marriage registered in Australia you
will need to have a legal marriage ceremony in Australia
either before or after you travel overseas.
There is an alternative to having a non-legal ceremony
in a language you don't understand, or a ceremony that
doesn't fit your personalities and values. And it is not
necessarily paying an Australian celebrant to have an
overseas holiday at your expense.
Talk to me about how
you can have an English language ceremony of your
dreams without a huge cost. You'll be amazed at how
easy it is.
What you need to do to
have a legal marriage overseas
Arranging a legal
marriage in many countries can be both costly and
complicated. You often have to spend a couple of days
doing pre-wedding legal stuff involving the Australian
Embassy and local authorities. You may have to be
"resident" in the country for a lengthy period before
your can marry, and then there are the language
difficulties). You might have to provide medical
information or undergo medical tests. There might be
quite onerous conditions, such as the length of time
between the official end of your previous marriage and
when you are legally able to remarry. Or you might
both have to be of the same religion and marry in a
religious ceremony.
Australia recognises legal marriages solemnised in
other countries as long as those marriages meet
Australian legal requirements in relation to
marriageable age, monogamy and other legal
restrictions, such as not being able to marry an
ancestor, a descendant, or a sibling. So, your
overseas marriage will be recognised as long as
-
both of you were at least 18 at the time of the
marriage
-
neither of you was legally married to another
person at the time
And that also means
that to be legally married the person who marries
you has to be authorised to do so by the legal
authorities in the place in which the marriage
is held and the marriage has to be registered in that
country.
Many Australian
couples who choose to have a romantic
destination wedding overseas are shocked when
they come back to Australia and find when one of them
goes to change their name to that of the other,
that the various government authorities at both state
and federal level will not accept an overseas marriage
certificate for that purpose. The only option
available is to apply for, and pay for, a legal name
change. which not only costs money and takes some
time, it changes the surname on their birth
certificate to the new (married) name.