Pete Horton
How to Get Married in France, a Legal Guide
If you’re a British or American couple and you’re dreaming of an idealistic rustic wedding in rural France, then let this guide save you hours of research and time. This guide covers legal and religious aspects for non-French residents and citizens and the best way to navigate the complexities of wedding in this beautiful country.
Firstly, any civil ceremony you have (whether in France or your home country) has to take place before any religious or symbolic ceremony in France – this is a strict rule that’s enforced for everyone.
Now, let’s assume you don’t have French nationality or residency – then straight off the bat – let me just save you loads of time and recommend you legally wed in your home country with a civil partnership, then have your spiritual or symbolic ceremony or celebration in France. This is the least stressful, cheapest, easiest, fastest way to proceed. Organising a wedding is difficult enough without complications adding unnecessary pressure – and that’s exactly what the French bureaucratic system will do.
The alternative to this, if you’re not a French resident or a French national, is triggering an expensive avalanche of bureaucracy, where you’ll have to jump through all sorts of hoops – sign, translate, organise, submit, and wade through layers and layers of impossible-to-translate legal documentation. You’ll need to hire professional, formally-approved (therefore, based in France) translators to produced legally-recognised documents like birth certificates – which isn’t a cheap process. Original documents will need to be sent to France to be translated and authenticated with an Apostille stamp.
If you want to legally wed in France and you’re not a resident, then you’re only option is prove a “long lasting bond” with the town where the legal ceremony will take place. This can be met if one of the couple or their parents owns or rents a house in France long-term. This way, you may be fortunate enough to find yourself in the same legal territory as someone who is a resident in France. You will still have to pay for your (for example) original British or American documents (such as birth certificates) to be submitted to and translated by French officials, but theoretically, a marriage is possible. Whether it is or not depends on the town hall you'll need to apply to. So, if one of you is a French resident or can prove a "long lasting bond", your first step will be to submit a civil ceremony application to his or her local town hall. This is likely to trigger a bureaucratic avalanche of paperwork – and every town hall may have its own requirements, making catch-all legal articles like this one difficult to write as detailed advice cannot be generalised. But, at least you will have a better idea of what may and may not be possible, assuming your French is good enough to understand the feedback you get from the town hall.
So, you’re a non-French resident, a non-French national, and you’ve now decided to have your legal civil ceremony in your home country – because you don’t have a choice. The good news is you can, once legally married elsewhere, have a religious ceremony in either a Protestant or Catholic church in France. If you want a priest of your own choosing to host the ceremony, you may just be able to pull it off. That is, if the French church of your choosing accepts your request; which can sometimes be made possible with a small hiring-fee to the church.
To summarise this advice, I would say the best way forward is usually to simplify things as much as possible: usually the best thing to do for British or American couples is have a civil ceremony in their own country, in secret, if necessary, then proceed to have a religious and/or symbolic ceremony in France. Either way, don't let the potential bureaucracy or other complications put you off pursuing your dream wedding in France. In my experience, French weddings are every bit as beautiful as their organisers dared dream.
