Marrying A Laos Woman (Maybe In Thailand)

[daveman]

Hi I am living in Laos and getting married to a Lao national. I know we could be waiting for more than a year for our marriage papers and could not leagal at least live together in Laos.

• Marriage papers in any case may cost as much a 2000 dollars. So rather than giving the 2000 to some marriage company, how easy would be to go to Thailand or Vietnam and get married. I should add that I have no full embassy in Thailand only a consulette but i do have an embassy in Vietnam. do we need a lot of paperwork? How long does it take to be legal? is there any extra costs? I have lots of questions. Does anyone know the procedure ?

[nottocus]

I got married in Hong Kong. Piece of cake.

[Mario2008]

If you want to marry in Thailand, you both will need papers from your respective embassies (consulates) confirming that you are free to marry. Each embassy has its own rules to issue such letter, so check your respective embassies website.

[gerryBScot]

As I discovered it can also be more difficult for two foreigners to get married in Thailand simply because outside of Bangkok the local "amphoes" ( the municipal offices where you register marriages, births, deaths etc) are often not accustomed to it; don't get me wrong there is no legal bar if your papers are in order. What I mean is the local "amphoes" are more accustomed to a Thai national marrying a foreigner. And requirements will probably be subject to a fair amount of variation and interpretation between different "amphoes". We, both foreigners, had to make three trips to our amphoe to get our "somrot" (wedding certificate) and had to bring two Thai worthies, with their ID cards, to witness everything; as I recall it also involved an enormous amount of paperwork: affidavits of freedom to marry from both embassies, translated and legalised. It was a very time consuming and expensive process, although the fee for the wedding certificate was as cheap as chips, but it was worth doing it and probably has saved us a lot of money now; for instance it enable us to register our marriage at my wife's Philippine embassy, they issued their own wedding certificate and every time we go to the Phils if we enter together and we produce our embassy certificate I automatically get a year's entry.

[FACTOR]

Your Lao fiancé still needs documents, and "permission", from the Lao embassy in Bangkok or Hanoi. The Lao authorities make it very difficult for foreigners to marry Lao citizens.