marriage requirements

VanRoss wrote:

I mean some professional service in Vietnam probably exists.

Sorry I can't help you with #6 as I'm not American. Getting ceremoniously married in Vietnam is the easy part. Getting the official marriage certificate for foreigners is a nightmare.

I asked the lady at the local government office and she called around for marriage service help. They all quoted around $2000 USD.

So I did it myself. Took me 6 months or 20 or so trips back and forth to various offices in and outside the city.  Exactly 1 day before my certificate of marriage impediment and bunch other certificate would have expired. I think it took long because I didn't grease anyone's palm except the crazy doctor that stalked me to outside the crazy ward.

jpbsimpson wrote:

VanRoss,
I have read through all of the posts stated here and feel that you do not need to worry too much.

I am British and married a Vietnamese lady here in HCMC.
The concept of marriage here is that the religious ceremony in the church and/or bride's home is the wedding that is recognised by her family. The civil ceremony in the Police Dept. is the legal ceremony stipulated by the government.

I had been away from UK for a great number of years and had no idea of getting documents from UK or anywhere else to support the marriage in Vietnam.

I applied to the British Embassy to have the "Notice of Impending marriage" posted for the regulation 3 weeks.
Apart from passport, house address here in Vietnam etc. the additional documents were:-
A copy of divorce decree or statement to the British Embassy that you were single or legally divorced and similar documents for the Vietnamese lady (translated to English and certified). There is no way for them to know if you had married someone elsewhere in the world. The two declarations signed by both you and your partner are legal statements declaring yourself free to marry. The period of three weeks where the notice of intending marriage is posted are for anyone to raise objections, usually on the grounds that one or other of you are already married. After the three weeks posting this got them to issue a statement of Non Impedence to Marriage which was then translated to Vietnamese.

A visit for both of us to the Mental hospital to certify that we were crazy enogh to get married was obtained and there was enough documentation to reqest a civil marriage with the Police Department here in H.C.M.C. The only difficulty that we experienced was that they wanted extra photocopies of certain documents and those were obtained for a payment of a very small number of dollars.

The whole concept was that I had the idea that if the Vietnamese government raised problems with the paperwork then we would have the religious ceremony performed in Vietnam and that I would take my new "wife" (as in not yet a certified marriage) to Hong Kong and get the civil ceremony there. Once you return to Vietnam the authorities have no reason to refuse to register the marriage in Vietnam. In the end this was not necessary.

Follow your partner's idea and don't worry. She will be able to sweet talk her way around any and all difficulties. If you are present and show worry then more and more difficulties will magically appear that need to be finacially resolved!

Just about spot on.

I got married to a Vietnamese lady just under 2 years ago and while the paperwork seems daunting, in fact if you do it step by step it isn't really difficult. In our case we had to visit the town where her birth was registered, first time to deliver the paperwork and be interviewed at the Dept of Womens Affairs and a second time to sign the papers that made us man and wife, under a big banner that says Marriage to Foreigner. The bloke who officiated at our marriage asked me why I had been married twice before and my answer that I like wedding cake was duly noted.

It will help if you make a list of things you need to do in chronological order - my g/f made a small spread sheet up in Excel - and with time limits as IIRC some documents have to be  submitted within three months of their initiation date. 

If you need photocopies of documents for the various departments, there is usually a photocopier in an adjacent room or building which will do the copies for around 1000 Dong a sheet.

Whilst it all seems a bit bureaucratic, in fact the various Vietnamese official departments you have to deal with a pretty efficient and some of them even have free wifi so you can surf whilst waiting your turn.

The worst official departments we dealt with was the British Embassy and Consulate. I had to have my Decree Absolute notarised at the Consulate, but first I had to send the document to the British embassy in Hanoi. The Embassy website which has the instructions wasn't clear on one point, so I sent an email requesting clarification. I received a curt response some days later to the effect that the info I needed was on the website.

I filled in a form and sent it with my Decree and payment to the embassy and received an email giving me an appointment to attend the Consulate to have my Decree notarised. There was a terse warning about not being late for the appointment and the email also said that the appointment would be confirmed 7 days before the appointment date which was set for 21 days later.

The confirmation of appointment email arrived 2 weeks after the appointment.

We duly turned up at the consulate 5 minutes before time on the appointment date to find that there was only one person behind the counter,  a Vietnamese girl whose English was very poor. She told us to wait, as she was busy.

After an hour or so I asked her to attend to us as all she seemed to be doing was shuffling paper about. She took my documents and disappeared upstairs. Ten minutes later she came back and asked what it was that I wanted. The next hour was a farce of the girl running up and down stairs with questions which we couldn't understand so in the end my wife acted as translator. Eventually after 2 and a half hours the girl came downstairs and said that the document couldn't be notarised as it was not an original document. I told her it was. She went upstairs, came down again and said it wasn't. After playing argument tennis with some faceless Richardhead upstairs, it transpired that "the Decree should have a red stamp not a black stamp".

There was now a danger that the faceless moron upstairs would bugger off for lunch and we would have to do the whole farce again including paying another fee.

I told the girl to tell the pillock upstairs that Decrees Absolute had red stamps up until December (IIRC) 2013 after which they were black stamps. This fact he could easily check by using a piece of technology called a computer linked to a mysterious thing called the internet by means of which a magic spell called GOOGLE would get the required confirmation.

3 and a half hours it took to get a bloody stamp from some faceless burk who was too self important to unscrew his backside from his chair and walk down a flight of stairs to deal with the matter. I kid you not!

Anyway, good luck with it, it seems daunting but just do it step by step and let your lady do most of the talking.