Registration Of Thai Marriage With British Embassy

[gerryBScot]

Just curious, is there any real point in my wife and I registering our Thai wedding with HMG in Bangkok? She's a filipina. As it is we are going to register our new born son's birth with the embassy and apply forclaim his UK citizenship and get him a passport, ouch, expensive huh, to register the wedding would be a significant additional expensive , ouch, ouch, so just curious is there any real benefit and if so what? Many thanks.

[lopburi3]

I believe it just makes the paperwork available in the UK if required later - without translations/and such. There is also a UK stamp that gets put into foreign passports what allows entry into UK which may be part of the process. Check the UK Embassy website for Bangkok as they do seem to have a lot of good information on it.

[lungbing]

First, just a matter of terminology. You are not registering your marriage at the British Embassy. That word implies they actually perform the marriage which, of course, they don't. The correct word is to record the marriage at the Embassy. Sorry to be pedantic, but I think it's an important point.

It is not necessary to so record your marriage. All they do is to take one of your wedding certificates and lodge it with the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths in London, and charge you a fortune for doing it. Your marriage will be entered in the registers so that anyone in future will be able to search the index to the registers and find your marriage and obtain a copy of the wedding certificate. So could you if you lose the original.

Not recording the marriage at the Embassy has no effect on the legality of your marriage if that is your worry. Basically if the marriage is recognised as being legal in the country in which it is performed then it's legal in the UK. This does not include the ceremony with monks usually performed in the Bride's house which is not a marriage but more of a blessing and is not legally a marriage, even in Thailand. It must be registered at the amphur to be legal.