US Citizen Getting Married in Thailand : Marriage Registration Help

[Beeonlotus]

Hey folks,

I'm a US citizen planning to get married in Thailand.  Due to covid, my fiancee and I are going to hold off on the official ceremony until the covid situation settles down.  However, we're planning to get legally married in anticipation of my move back to the US in a year and half.  For the marriage registration (is that the correct technical term?), I had two questions:

1. Do I need to bring a witness for the affidavit?

On the US Embassy's site, it says that you should provide your own witness to notarization only if it's necessary.  However, in all the different documents that they notarize, I didn't see any with a place for a witness to sign other than an embassy official.  I'm assuming this means I don't need to provide one, but I'd like to double-check before driving all the way down there only to learn I was wrong.

2. Does anyone have any experience with the other steps of the process in covid times and could offer some advice?

I searched on the forum and repeatedly only came up with a few posts which didn't answer this question.  I'm surprised this is so and guessing the search function's bugged, so if it's been asked elsewhere and explained already, feel free to just send me a link. 

If not, though, I'd appreciate any advice on this.  Since I live in Korat and don't have a car, I'd have to rent one or hire a taxi to go down to Bangkok and stay at my second home in Bangkok.  Any sense of what kind of rough timeframe is expected given covid would be useful, as well as any other unexpected issues - calling ahead to book translation services, issues with the MFA, etc., would all be extremely useful.  There's nothing that I hate more than ping-ponging back-and-forth between officials or wasting a day because a signature was missed along the way.

Appreciate your help in advance.

[lopburi3]

1.  No.

2.  No experience during COVID but COVID situation is expected to not be a factor for most things in a month or so.   Normally you would take paperwork to translation office and have them take care of from there and mail to you to allow registration.

[ubonjoe]

Have you looked at this page on the embassy website. https://th.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resources-of-u-s-citizens/getting-married-in-thailand/

[Beeonlotus]

@lopburi3 - thanks for that. 

 

@ubonjoe - Yes, I went to the website and looked through that very file already.

[GinBoy2]

Well regardless of covid, you need two witnesses at the Thai registration of your marriage.

 

You don't need to do anything at the US embassy to register your marriage.

 

When you apply for the CR-1 with USCIS that's when the fun begins. 

 

All the Thai documentation will be required along with certified translations.

 

So sorry for all of you doing this in the post DCF world. It was so simple and quick when we did it at the USCIS field office in BKK, but Trump and his fanboys put an end to that in the anti-immigrant world.

 

Plan on 12-18 months for the CR-1 approval, covid or not.