Hi Val
I have pm'd you.
Thank you very much, such a quick response
Val
Val ..........
As doubtless JK has told you, your son will almost certainly need to get married at the Mairie first - I doubt that they'd (Maire + Secretaire) come to your premises, but they might. You'd have to ask them.
Below is a list of the documentation requirements replicated from a recent thread, although apparently the Certificat Medical is no longer required. It's not particularly hard: it just requires a bit of persistence and adherence to the list.
What you need from the Mairie is a 'drop-dead' date for when they require your dossier in order to post the banns. If they say "one month", then at least you know where you are and you can start to seriously plan.
At the risk of boring everybody else here to tears, you'll need:
Should either of your circumstances be more complicated by previous marriages, then you'll require the obvious (i.e. decree absolutes, death certs) for both the Embassy and the Mairie.
My suggestion would be that you produce a list as above and present it to the Secretary at the Mairie. Ask her to confirm within the next couple of days that there's nothing else that she requires in order for your marriage to take place. Even better, get her to put a date required against the docs (it'll be the same for all of them).
Re the Guide, it's probably not departmental, just whether they're 'on the case'. As said, you can get it off the web, but if you're struggling, pm me your address and I'll drop by our Mairie & see if they've got a spare.
PM me if you'd like any further help.
I'm in the process of sorting out the paperwork for getting married in France (thanks, Gardian!).
If it were not for the logistics of re-establishing residence in the UK we would have taken that route. We also considered Jersey, which is easy & quick but the travel and hotel costs mounted up.
I think you're right about them marrying in the UK then coming over for the 'do'. Even if you have a church wedding in France you must have the civil service at the Mairie first. I'm pretty sure that there is no equivalent of having a registrar come to your church or marriage venue. Having a UK civil ceremony followed by whatever religious, humanist or just plain bacchanalian event in France makes a lot of sense.
We got married in France last year and it was all a bit complicated with all the paperwork. However, worth it in the end. Our Mayor was prepared to marry us anywhere within the commune. We elected to have the service at the Mairie as it was a bit more formal and it was on a Sunday too!!!
One small point, to get married in France do you not have to be resident for a certain amount of time to qualify?
40 days....*sigh*
But you can elect to have a quiet civil signing in your home country and a humanist celebrant for your france ceremony as we are doing on the 23rd of this month in Carcassonne. We both live in Canada currently, but H2B is from the UK and that is what we had to do.
Which is quite fine, as we would have opted for a Humanist ceremony here in Canada as well. We wanted a religious free wedding that we could plan (we wrote our ceremony) and was strictly about celebrating our union and all things wonderful:)
The officiant we have hired is from Ireland and we are flying her over to Carcassonne where she will stay with friends. She is a lovely woman and very easy to work with. We found her on the British Humanist Association website, but I would be quite happy to provide an email address for her if you are interested in taking this route. Just send me a private message and it will prompt my email account to look at these messages, otherwise I may forget (we are leaving to Brighton tomorrow)...
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