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.