HELP - How do you decide which country to get legally married?

[Deleted User]

Hi Peeps!

I need some help. My fiance is an American citizen, while I am Australian and we are looking to have a destination wedding in either Italy or Hawaii or somewhere inbetween. One of the main question that pops up when wedding planning is - do you want your destination wedding to also have a civil ceremony or only symbolic?

I've tried to do some research online but I'm just plain confused now - is there any difference with having civil ceremony in either Australia or US or even Italy - and are there different implications depending on location? By implications I dont mean so much as paperwork but more future implications - whether legally or for tax reason or anything like that? The only other thing I can think if is that - if you get married in Italy, then does that mean (touch wood) that should one day you need to get a divorce, you will need to go to the italian courts based on italian marital laws?

Any help/insight would be great!!!

thanks!

Jacqui

kimberly0315

I am from the USA, and my FI is from NZ.  We currently live in NZ and are going to Hawaii to get married.  It's half way in between for us.  We will be legally married there.  As far as I know, we don't have any tax obligations for getting married in Hawaii.  I have no idea about the divorce question though.

Jells2dot0

We are both American citizens but had a civil ceremony in Australia. We made sure our Australian marriage certificate would be legally transferrable to the US. So, when I went to change my name, I just handed them my Australian marriage cert! There was no need to file anything else with the US. If we were to ever divorce, we would do so in the US courts and there are no tax implications for us in Australia either.

From my own research, having a legal wedding in Italy is a bit complicated. You need to understand the residency requirements. These requirements vary by destination and citizenship. I do NOT recommend having a symbolic ceremony unless everyone you are inviting knows it's symbolic.Your wedding is the event when you legally wed, even if it's just signing of papers at a courthouse. Your guests will be spending thousands of dollars to see your wedding and if it's a "re-do", they should know that before attending.

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the insight!

Jells2dot0 - just to clarify - are you saying that a legal wedding in italy is complicated, however if we are to have just a symbolic wedding there, we should just let everyone know so they dont feel cheated out of seeing our actual signing of the paperwork?

I never thought about it like that - besides the parents, do you think others will really feel unhappy not to see our formal signing?

Jells2dot0

@sushigirl23 yes, you got the gist of what I was saying. Letting people know it's a vow renewal will allow them to decide if they would still like to attend, even though it's not your actual wedding. There is a BIG thread about this on the Etiquette board. Actually, there are several threads about this. When people go to a wedding they want to actually see the couple get married. Here are two of the threads:

http://forums.theknot.com/discussion/1036614/legally-married-now-having-a-real-wedding-stop-here-first-aka-the-ppd-faq-thread#latest

http://forums.theknot.com/discussion/1045424/another-reason-to-not-get-married-now-and-have-a-ppd-later#latest