You might think that it is super easy to get married in Europe if you are from different European countries. But it's not.

I will show you what we had to do and which documents we needed to fulfil all the bureaucratic requirements.

My wife is Portuguese and I'm German, we don't live either in Portugal nor in Germany. On top of that we had some obstacles due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But you know, where love is, there is a way. Cheesy, I know

Documents

This probably varies according to where you are from but in our case we needed:

• Passports or ID Cards from both
• International birth certificates from both
• Certificate of no impediment - a document, that states that you are not married (you need to be single, divorced, etc.)
  • In the case of my Portuguese wife, this information "was" in the birth certificate, or more precisely, as it did not say that we were married that meant that we were indeed single (there was nothing written there...).
  • In my case, I had to get a Ehefähigkeitszeugnis

Decisions you to make in advance

There are a couple of things you need to decide before your show up at the registry office.

Separation Of Property

You should think about how you want to manage the separation of property in advance. Depending on which law (from which country) you take for your marriage the separation of property by default might vary and if different than what you would prefer you will need to make an extra contract at the civil law notary.

Family Name

As we decided to get a combination of both last names (possible with the Portuguese law) I had to request the approval by the German civil registry office, the so called Namenserklärungen. This has also implications later for the last name of potential kids.

Extra advice

If possible get married in one of the countries from which one of you is from, doing it at the embassies might be even more cumbersome.