Hi, Does anyone have personal experience of getting married in Spain. Our daughter who is English is marrying a Spaniard. They live in Madrid. She knows there is quite a lot of paperwork to sort out. Can anyone tell us how long it took them, was it a straight forward process and what was the cost. Any advice gratefully received. Thank you.

I got married in Spain - it was pretty easy, and cost not very much in paperwork , maybe 100 euros or so

I cant remember exactly what we did, but it wasnt much. We needed to go to the British embassy to put a notice up - and also book the ayuntamiento, which was free and a lovely building in its own right

Getting married in a church is tricky, you need to prove your Catholicism

We were married here in 1975 & as far as I'm aware, the basic things are still in place:
*one of the 2 people must be catholic
*your daughter will need to prove she is single (divorcees not allowed to remarry in the catholic church)
*she'll need a birth certificate & a baptism certificate (which will help if she is a catholic, so as to "prove" she is catholic!)
*The 'libro de familia' you receive is a form of marriage certificate & used to contain 13 pages for the addition of children. Perhaps it still does? When children apply for an ID card, etc, they'll need the 'libro de familia' with their date of entry.

As far as I'm aware, the British Consulates have no facilities for a marriage, but stand corrected if they do!

Hope all goes well.

Thank you for your replies. They are not getting married in a church.

Hello Caroline.

You will find information about marriage in Spain on our website. Please see the folowing link:
http://ukinspain.fco.gov.uk/en/help-...ages/marriage/

Kind Regards


UKinSpain

My daughter contacted the British Embassy who were very helpful. Today she and her Spanish fiance went along to their local town hall which is on the outskirts of Madrid to see what they needed to do.

My daughter was told by the person authorised to carry out marriages that as the UK is not in the EU she could not get married in Spain

My daughter told the person that the UK is in the EU but the offical in the town hall said no they are not. My daughter was told that she would need to check with the court if she could get married in Spain as the UK is not in the EU. My daughter asked the official if they could do that for her, eventually they did and said yes they would marry her.

My daughter asked this person a few questions as she wanted to make sure that she got things right only to be told off by the official for asking too many questions

Is it just me but do you not need to have at least some basic education to be in such a responsible position.

Also no marriages in this particular town hall can be carried out in August as this person is on holiday then. She also told my daughter that no burials can be carried out in the month of August as she is responsible for authorising them too, can this be true They can only get married there on two Fridays out of the month and between 12.00 and 1.00.

Needless to say my daughter who had arrived at the town hall very excited as she was wanting to arrange her marriage left feeling anything but

Does your daughter speak fluent Spanish? It sounds like there are some translation issues going on - either that or the person is very stupid

It took us 5 mins to arrange a town hall wedding, they even had a booking system online!

Of course every ayuntamiento is different

My daughter lives with the Spanish, works with the Spanish, has lived in Spain for several years and is totally fluent. She was also with her Spanish fiance.

Then the person is stupid - unfortunately there are many stupid people in the world!

Maybe they should have a word with the Alcalde ... I'm sure he or she would be horrified by such an example of incompetence.