Getting Married in Philippines

[pbroz1 2]

What does anyone know about the process of getting married in the Philippines? There's no CENOMAR here, so how do you prove that you're eligible for marriage? Does PSA accept scanned copies and emails for filing?  It's nearly impossible to send something to the Philippines in my experience. I saw there's a premarital counseling requirement.  Can that be done by video call?  Would it be acceptable to have your Filipina fiancée act as a Power of Attorney so she could sign on my behalf? If I have to be present to originally sign everything, it looks like it could take 6-8 weeks between all the different filings at the different agencies.  Who has that kind of time?

 

How do people go to the beaches and get married? There's a lot of that.

[Lil bear 4,643]

8 minutes ago, pbroz1 said:

What does anyone know about the process of getting married in the Philippines? There's no CENOMAR here, so how do you prove that you're eligible for marriage? Does PSA accept scanned copies and emails for filing?  It's nearly impossible to send something to the Philippines in my experience. I saw there's a premarital counseling requirement.  Can that be done by video call?  Would it be acceptable to have your Filipina fiancée act as a Power of Attorney so she could sign on my behalf? If I have to be present to originally sign everything, it looks like it could take 6-8 weeks between all the different filings at the different agencies.  Who has that kind of time?

 

How do people go to the beaches and get married? There's a lot of that.

Just confused about your visa type -K1 fiancé, your post  in the K3 forum, and your question about marrying in the Philippines.
 

If you are using K1 visa then you need to get married here in the US once the fiancé has entered using the fiancé visa 

 

 

[pbroz1 2]

3 minutes ago, Lil bear said:

Just confused about your visa type -K1 fiancé, your post  in the K3 forum, and your question about marrying in the Philippines.
 

If you are using K1 visa then you need to get married here in the US once the fiancé has entered using the fiancé visa 

 

 

I understand that process. My fiancée got sick and missed her window to come. The embassy denied her a reissuance. So were going to have to start over one way or another.  We decided to research getting married first before refiling to see what that might look like.  So it's an exploratory question. 

[Lil bear 4,643]

Just now, pbroz1 said:

I understand that process. My fiancée got sick and missed her window to come. The embassy denied her a reissuance. So were going to have to start over one way or another.  We decided to research getting married first before refiling to see what that might look like.  So it's an exploratory question. 

K thx for the clarification. I will move your question to the regional subforum for best responses. 

[Mello3 50]

15 hours ago, pbroz1 said:

What does anyone know about the process of getting married in the Philippines? There's no CENOMAR here, so how do you prove that you're eligible for marriage? Does PSA accept scanned copies and emails for filing?  It's nearly impossible to send something to the Philippines in my experience. I saw there's a premarital counseling requirement.  Can that be done by video call?  Would it be acceptable to have your Filipina fiancée act as a Power of Attorney so she could sign on my behalf? If I have to be present to originally sign everything, it looks like it could take 6-8 weeks between all the different filings at the different agencies.  Who has that kind of time?

 

How do people go to the beaches and get married? There's a lot of that.

My wife and I were originally going to get married in the Philippines because we also wanted her family to be there and we found out that it was a bit of a cumbersome issue with how long I had to be in the country to do the paperwork and to attend the accounts pre-counseling sessions and I couldn't take off a month from work to take care of it so we wound up doing the Utah wedding but I went to the Philippines and did the wedding with her in the Philippines with her family and we had the guy performing ceremony from Utah on video. So that way we had a US wedding in the Philippines and her family got to attend and my family attended online.

[RO_AH 1,692]

Been there, done that. Start by sending your fiance the her LCR and have her find out the requirements for her to marry a foreigner. It differs slightly from place so this step is most important. Filipinos tend to want to rely on "they said". They will ask a bunch of people that they know and they will take that as fact. You can't have that because you need to make sure to have everything ready because you will not have time for delays. Make sure that whatever they tell her that she writes it all down or that they give it to her in writing. One requirement that is for all Philippines is the time that it takes to get your marriage license so that you can get married. That takes 10 business days (2 weeks or more if there are holidays). My trip was 3 weeks. We went to the LCR on the first day to register. My last week there we got married in the court. She may want a church wedding. That would take much longer due to the church requirements. 

[pbroz1 2]

3 minutes ago, RO_AH said:

Been there, done that. Start by sending your fiance the her LCR and have her find out the requirements for her to marry a foreigner. It differs slightly from place so this step is most important. Filipinos tend to want to rely on "they said". They will ask a bunch of people that they know and they will take that as fact. You can't have that because you need to make sure to have everything ready because you will not have time for delays. Make sure that whatever they tell her that she writes it all down or that they give it to her in writing. One requirement that is for all Philippines is the time that it takes to get your marriage license so that you can get married. That takes 10 business days (2 weeks or more if there are holidays). My trip was 3 weeks. We went to the LCR on the first day to register. My last week there we got married in the court. She may want a church wedding. That would take much longer due to the church requirements. 

Thanks for the answer.  What about registering with PSA to show you are eligible to get married? I'm divorced.  I have a copy of the decree, but it's not apostisized. It's just a copy the court sent.  Somewhere I read that you have to go to the embassy and they will notarize an affidavit that says as much.  What documents did you take with you when you went? What did you send over beforehand? Were you able to send anything by email?  

Also, the city where she lives requires premarital counseling.  Is this something that you could do over video call?

Lastly, what should I expect to pay for everything start to finish?

Thanks for whatever help you can provide me. 

[RO_AH 1,692]

8 minutes ago, pbroz1 said:

What about registering with PSA to show you are eligible to get married? I'm divorced. 

You don't.

 

9 minutes ago, pbroz1 said:

I have a copy of the decree, but it's not apostisized. It's just a copy the court sent.  Somewhere I read that you have to go to the embassy and they will notarize an affidavit that says as much.

You used to have to go to the embassy and get a affidavit/certificate showing that you were free to marry. You show them the divorce decree and that give you a paper. I forget what it was called, it was a while ago. When I landed in Manila we stayed there overnight and went to the embassy. But from what I understand they do not do that anymore.

 

14 minutes ago, pbroz1 said:

What documents did you take with you when you went? What did you send over beforehand? Were you able to send anything by email?  

All documents were brought by me when I flew there. I needed needed my birth certificate, divorce decree, and not sure what else. Like I said, make her go and find out the requirements so you do not miss anything.

 

17 minutes ago, pbroz1 said:

Also, the city where she lives requires premarital counseling.  Is this something that you could do over video call?

This is pretty much standard across the Philippines. You will get a good laugh. It must be in person. We had a family friend with us that knew the counselor well so they were mostly just talking the hole time. But we did go through it. When they discuss the financial part where all the money goes to the wife for her to manage, that's the part where I got a good laugh. My wife already knew that was not happening in our relationship.

 

22 minutes ago, pbroz1 said:

Lastly, what should I expect to pay for everything start to finish?

Yes.

[pbroz1 2]

1 minute ago, RO_AH said:

You don't.

 

You used to have to go to the embassy and get a affidavit/certificate showing that you were free to marry. You show them the divorce decree and that give you a paper. I forget what it was called, it was a while ago. When I landed in Manila we stayed there overnight and went to the embassy. But from what I understand they do not do that anymore.

 

All documents were brought by me when I flew there. I needed needed my birth certificate, divorce decree, and not sure what else. Like I said, make her go and find out the requirements so you do not miss anything.

 

This is pretty much standard across the Philippines. You will get a good laugh. It must be in person. We had a family friend with us that knew the counselor well so they were mostly just talking the hole time. But we did go through it. When they discuss the financial part where all the money goes to the wife for her to manage, that's the part where I got a good laugh. My wife already knew that was not happening in our relationship.

 

Yes.

Thanks again for sharing your experience.   At what point did you start on the immigration process? We're you in the K-1 process, then switch over, or did you wait until you were married to start the process? 

[RO_AH 1,692]

8 hours ago, pbroz1 said:

Thanks again for sharing your experience.   At what point did you start on the immigration process? We're you in the K-1 process, then switch over, or did you wait until you were married to start the process? 

Never wanted to do a K-1, it was CR1 all the way for me. Get everything done in 1 shot. What you may want to consider is Utah online wedding. That was not available at the time. . I started once we received the PSA marriage certificate.

[GG and AD 1]

When my wife & I married in The Philippines in Oct 2024,  I brought with me the original divorce decree from my prior marriage and 1 apostilled copy of the divorce decree, 1 apostilled copy of my birth certificate & 1 apostilled copy of my passport, along with 2 more more copies of everything listed above. You need a notarized affidavit for legal capacity for contract to marriage, notarized at the US embassy, which you need  to set up for an appointment before your trip there. And a certificate from the pre-marriage counseling seminar, right before you get the marriage certificate started and sent off to get authorized, which takes 10 business days to get back, not counting holidays. Your fiancé needs a CENOMAR (certificate of no marriage) if she never has been married before & official copies of her birth certificate from the PSA for the marriage certificate. It was recommended to me that it takes a minimum of 3 weeks to get all of that done with a very tight window. I took 4 weeks off to be safe & I'm glad that I did because we had to reschedule the seminar for 3 days later than we wanted, as they only did it on Fridays where she lives & on top of that we had a typhoon that came 3-4 days before the scheduled wedding while we were waiting for the marriage certificate to get back. Stressful to say the least, but we got it done and had a beautiful wedding. I watched You tube videos and read a lot about it online, before my trip, which helped it a lot.

[spicynujac 97]

What we did:
Legal / civil ceremony was performed over a Utah video call (fast, cheap, easy).

Religious ceremony was performed at the Cebu Cathedral over a year later.

Wife entered as an IR-1 permanent resident with 10 year renewable green card.  Bonus: NO additional fees or interviews will be due until US citizenship!

 

Here's a tip:  Most of the people you see getting married on the beach, even in the USA, are *legally* married in a separate process before or after that ceremony.  The beach wedding is just the social / religious component of the marriage (to us, the most important one!)

 

A couple of others above suggested the Utah civil marriage.  It's what we did and still looks like hands down the best approach.  You can be legally married in about a week for about $75 through Utah if you apply today (shoutout to Universal Heart Ministry who did a fantastic job officiating).  That takes care of the legal requirement for immigration, and a ceremony can be done anywhere / anytime you want to satisfy the social and religious components (I'm not downplaying these--we did not consider ourselves married until this was done--but the US State Department does, so we immediately filed for our immigration paperwork and had our ceremony a year later!)

 

You can get legally married any number of places around the world, including the Philippines or even a third / neutral country, but there may be fees, requirements, interviews, blood tests, documents, waiting periods, etc.  Utah makes it as fast and easy as driving through a Las Vegas wedding chapel.  Much faster, easier, and cheaper than a wedding would be in my home state, in fact.

 

If a religious / social ceremony is important to you (and if not, it will almost certainly be important to your bride!), planning for a fun, memorable, and special ceremony can be a great way of passing the time during waiting for immigration processing.  We had our ceremony over a year after our legal Utah wedding certificate was issued, and it kept my wife busy and the waiting game far less difficult.  It sounds like you are possibly already with her in the Philippines so maybe this is less important, but still a factor to consider.

 

Just remember, you can file your spouse's visa petition (form I-130) immediately after legal/civil marriage, as long as you are both physically present together during the ceremony (if not you must physically meet as husband and wife before filing).  While it stinks having to start a new process, I think you'll be happier getting a superior spousal visa in the long run.

 

If anyone if Philippines asks why you have a Utah wedding certificate already, just say it was easier / required / whatever for US immigration purposes.  The priests involved in our ceremony had no problem with it (one of them did grill us a bit in the church premarital interview, but I suppose that is their job!).  I would 100% go this route again.  One of my American groomsman said it was the best wedding he ever went to and wondered what we spent.  He said in the states it would have been a $100,000 ceremony.  I spent less than 1/10th that!