You have multiple options for legalizing your marriage. Here they are:
Make Your Wedding Legal:
You Want to Run Off and Get Married. But How Will You Make Your Marriage Official?
The fantasy of running off to foreign lands to get married is a romantic and beautiful dream. Not as romantic and beautiful? Figuring out how to make your marriage legal in the United States. You have several options available to you, and we will go over each one below.
US Courthouse Wedding
You may dream of leaving home as two individuals and coming back married. But, let’s be honest… It’s very difficult to get legally married in Italy.
Most of Elope Italy’s customers go into their wedding plans hoping that they would like to have the complete legal wedding in Italy. Once reality sets in on the many steps required by the Italian government for foreigners to have their marriage legally finalized, they often opt to get married at their local courthouse.
Pros:
Incredibly easy and stress-free. Depending on jurisdiction, you usually just make an appointment and go. The ceremony is quick.
It’s very inexpensive. You will pay for your license, usually a small fee for the judge or magistrate, and that’s it.
Your time in Italy won’t be spent finding official buildings, tracking down translators, or spent filling out form after form.
Your ceremony can be in English! Legal Italian ceremonies must be in Italian with a translator to ensure you know what you are agreeing to.
Cons:
It’s not the exact fairytale you always dreamed of. However, nobody needs to know what legal processes were done, and when. Leave that out of the story!
Italian Civil Ceremony
There’s no hiding it: If you wish to get legally married in Italy, you are going to spend a long – a loooong, long time and lots of work– on paperwork and visiting consulates and embassies both in both the United States and in Italy.
And this is just before your wedding ceremony. You’ll be doing much of it in reverse after your ceremony to bring the paperwork back to the United States to get it certified.
All of the details and requirements are listed below for you to consider. None of these steps can be skipped, and it’s not uncommon to get to Italy and one of the meetings not go as you had hoped.
While we gently urge you to get married at your local courthouse, we will definitely walk you through the whole process if you wish to do the legal option in Italy.
Pros:
Experience how Italian government works, and see Italian wedding law work first-hand.
Have a legal wedding certificate!
Interact one-on-one with Italian government officials. You will have interacions you never normally would.
Cons:
This process will take 4-6 months of constant paperwork and visiting Italian consulates and embassies, in person, before, during, and after your destination Italian elopement.
Process To Obtain Italian Marriage Certificate
These are the required steps needed to get legally married in Italy. Please note that any of these steps can be denied at any time by any Italian official.
Obtain Your Personal Legal Documents
You will need to gather the following original forms and documents:
Your up-to-date American passport
Official long form, signed, and stamped birth certificates
Divorce decree, if applicable
Note that women cannot remarry within 300 days of a divorce. Some exclusions can be granted, but medical proof will be needed to show you are not pregnant.
Death certificate (if appropriate)
State-issued identification (driver’s license)
Atto Notorio
The Atto Notorio is an official stamp that says an Italian official looked at all of your documents and has decided that you are who you say you are.
You will have to get the Atto Notorio at one of the ten Italian consulates throughout the United States. You will need two witnesses to visit the consulate, and they will need to bring valid state-issued identification.
Nulla Osta
Once you get to Italy, you will have to appear at the American embassy to receive your Nulla Osta.
The Nulla Osta is just like the Atto Notorio in that it certifies that you are who you say you are. It’s a way to make sure the one you received at the Italian consulate in America wasn’t altered or changed on your journey to Italy. In a way, it’s a form of two-factor authentication.
Marco da Bollo Stamps
Probably the easiest step in this process, you will need to visit a tobacco store in the province you wish to get married and purchase two Marco da Bollo stamps. They are pretty cheap – a few Euros each.
Legalising the Nulla Osta
Once you have received both of your Nulla Osta’s, you will need to have the documents legalised by having them stamped at the Ufficio Legalizazione of the provincial Italian Government Agency, the Prefettura. You should check at the American Consulate the Prefettura closest to you but you will find a full list of the the Prefettura’s in Italy here.
You won’t need an appointment. However, it will be highly unlikely that anyone will speak English. So, either have enough fluency in Italian to speak to government employees, or hire a translator.
Visit Town Hall
When you have all of your documents together with their many stamps and approvals – and all translations – you must then appear before the town hall along with an interpreter to present them and make your declaration of your intention to marry. This will need to happen two days before the wedding.
Your Wedding!
Only the Mayor, the Ufficiale dello Stato Civile, or one of his/her assistants performs can perform civil ceremony. The ceremony must be in Italian, so unless you are completely fluent in Italian, you will have to have a translator present.
You will be answering more questions than is typical in an American wedding. If you misunderstand any of the questions and answer “incorrectly,” the official has the power and option to decline certifying the forms. So, a translator is definitely recommended.
The Marriage Certificate
The officiant will give you the completed and legal marriage certificate immediately after your ceremony.
You will need to immediately take it to the Prefettura you visited earlier to get its appropriate stamps.
This process can take several days, so ensure you will be in Italy for several days after your wedding so you will be able to pick it up and bring it home with you.
After you get your marriage certificate back from the Prefettura, you are done! All that’s left is filing the certificate with your local Register of Deeds or Probate Court to have your marriage registered and recognized in the United States.
