Where ever in the world you are, in order to get married you are required to get a Marriage License. Oh yes, my smooth sailing has hit some very large brick walls, leaving us stuck between a rock and a hard place - excellent! Luckily for my readers who might be embarking the same, or similar journey, I am about to tell you what problems we encountered, what we did and how long it took.
Marriage License
The start....
Upon a conversation with our Priest, he advised the marriage certificate would possibly take one month AFTER the wedding to be created and back in our hands, which we might have to sign for upon collection - not ideal. Additionally, we would need to be in Trinidad for at least 3-4 weeks to process the banns, notice of marriage and then get married. Being told this in March, we are advised that it's much better to come to Trinidad already married, via a Civil ceremony because i) the catholic church does not recognise a non-catholic wedding, and ii) when we do have our religious ceremony, having a marriage paperwork already speeds up the catholic marriage certificate meaning we could take it when we leave Trinidad 5 days after the ceremony.
Next steps.....
Looking at the positive side to any situation, I looked at the possibility getting married in various places and have the following comments:
London Marriage License:
You need to be in the UK for at least 7 working days (meaning they do not count Sat & Sunday!), then you need to place notice of your marriage which needs to be up for 21 days, again, excluding the weekends. Once all of that is done, you can set a date. All in all, the UK required you to be in the country for over one month.
(Over one month, plus an additional 3 weeks in Trinidad, is more holiday allowance than we have and our employers would laugh if we asked for this time off work!!)..... UK = No.
Qatar Marriage License:
Since we are both in Qatar, how about we find a place here? I thought, being a Muslim country, this might be more challenging, so I commence my investigation. The Catholic Church here was able to wed us, the local court could not as it's under muslim law, but our problem is that we need to have a non-religious wedding. So I contacted the British Embassy, Doha. They said they stopped marrying couples over three years ago and would need to investigate with the London office whether or not they could do it again. A few hours later I received a phone call saying YES! - Perfect... or so I thought!
1) For non-residents (those without a Resident Permit), you must be in the Country for 21 days before you can apply for a Civil Ceremony and they DO include the weekends - I'd been in the country almost one month and J lives here - check!
2) We needed to send over our ID's and other personal documents to verify we were who we were - check!
3) As this marriage is between one British National and one non-national, we needed to get a letter from the Embassy of the non-national, in this case Trinidad, to confirm that under the Law in which the marriage would take place, will be recognised as a legal marriage in Trinidad. Simple huh? I was even provided the text required on the letter - brilliant.
So I called Trinidad & Tobago office in London and explained what was required, I was told to send the text over and they would send it on to the Capital of Trinidad to create the letter. 3 days later we received the letter...... with completely different text. I sent it over to the UK Embassy hoping they would say OK, 4 days later we were told no, this was not acceptable and they needed that specific wording. I called up the T&T office and they said they were not able to, as it was specific to me and J, and they could get in trouble if they wrote what we asked for. I spoke to the UK Embassy and asked that they just accept the letter. They said no, and unless we got we couldn't progress.
3 weeks passed and this letter situation was still not resolved. Being from the Commonwealth, you would think both Embassies had a process in place for such a situation - of course not! That would require common sense. Loosing my patience, I ask that the UK Embassy call the T&T Embassy to resolve this matter, why should our marriage suffer because both embassies are incapable of composing a letter that one another will accept?........ 1 day later, we receive the letter with the wording. 3 weeks wasted, but we have the letter. So now we can post our banns?
4) The Doha Embassy sent the documents to London and they said No. The next step was to get a CNI - Certificate of Non-Impediment for J, to prove that he is not married under any religion: Muslim, Christian Hindu or Catholic. Once we receive his CNI, we can post our banns and get married 2 weeks later - 3 weeks before we are due to leave Qatar.
Back to T&T Embassy we go...... 'Yes, we can do this for J, it costs £12 and will take 3 months'........ 'why 3 months???'......'oh because someone needs to physically go through all of the books by hand and check that he is not already married'. This means it will bring us very close to the date we leave Qatar. We asked a family member who reside in Trinidad, if they could go to the Embassy in Trinidad and ask the same question. One week later we are told it will take up to 6-weeks, better, but not ideal. We commenced the process. (If London were more organised, we could have gotten this ball rolling while we got the other letter!!!! grrr grrr).
6 weeks later, we receive the CNI. I rushed to give it to the UK embassy knowing that our time frame to get married was short. I was told to come in to the Embassy and pay for our banns. I paid for our banns and was then told - oh, we've already posted your banns so now you have signed this paperwork, we will send it to London who will say yes or no to your marriage - Hallelujah, finally a bit of good news!!!!
4 days later, I receive good news, our marriage has been approved............ and there was bad news. The banns had been up since Feb and now 2 months later, it had expired so they had to post them again. Sure, after a 3 month wait so far, whats another 2 weeks, right? ....'So this will be posted for 21 days and then we can marry you'...... yup, another brick wall, 14 days now turns into 21 days - they were informed incorrectly. I said we are leaving the country June 20th, it is realistic that we will get married before? No.
So, feeling incredibly low after all the work we'd put into this, to find out that that in the end, it all came to nothing..... apart from useful information for my readers.
In short:
A British Citizen getting married to a Trinidadian requires:
x1 Letter acknowledging the law you will be wed under is recognised by T&T Laws (this took us 3 weeks, but get your embassy to talk to the T&T Embassy as it only took 1 day!) at the same time order the CNI.
x1 CNI (Certificate of non-impediment) T&T London will tell you 3 months, but if you have a person in Trinidad, by them going to the office in Trinidad, reduced this time to 6 weeks. MAKE SURE THEY STAMP YOUR LETTER otherwise it is worth nothing.
Then you will have a smooth transition to getting married in a UK Embassy wherever you are in the world!
What do we do now?
We went back to our Priest and advised that despite our best efforts, we cannot get married before we arrive. We were advised, 'oh yes, I have been told there is a quicker marriage license where you have to be in Trinidad for 3 days and on the 4th day, you go to the office and buy your license'. All you need is your ID, and show your return tickets out of the country.
After all of the above, telling me this brings music to my ears.
Marriage License = check! Well, let's not be too hasty now.... only arriving in Trinidad will answer whether this works or not!!
Sorry for the length of this post, but I really wanted you to understand what is required so you don't end up putting all this work in for absolutely nothing.
Time for bed!
International Bride.... XOXO
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