Documents Needed to Get Married in the Philippines: One Checklist for the Filipino, One for the Foreigner

Who Sets the List: Call That One Registrar Before You Do Anything

Clear up a common misconception first: there is no single nationwide, line-by-line marriage document list in the Philippines. The law fixes the requisites — the essential requisites in Article 2 of the Family Code (legal capacity of both parties, consent freely given before the solemnizing officer) and the formal requisites in Article 3 (authority of the solemnizing officer, a valid marriage licence, and a ceremony before the officer with at least 2 witnesses of legal age). What paper you produce to evidence those requisites is implemented by the Local Civil Registrar (LCR) of the city or municipality where you intend to marry, and local practice varies in the details.

The requisites themselves are hard-edged. Article 4 provides that the absence of any essential or formal requisite renders the marriage void ab initio, while a mere irregularity in a formal requisite does not affect validity — though the party responsible is civilly, criminally and administratively liable. In other words, a registrar asking for one more photocopy is practice; holding a ceremony with no valid licence is a nullity. Those are not the same category of problem.

So the correct opening move is:

1. Fix where you file first. Article 9 provides that the licence is issued by the LCR of the city or municipality where either contracting party habitually resides — you cannot simply pick whichever city hall is convenient;
2. Contact that specific LCR, get its position on each item below, and note down when you asked and who you spoke to;
3. Split the list into two piles: things obtainable locally (PSA certificates, seminar certificates, local IDs) and things that must come from abroad (divorce decrees, death certificates, home-country certifications). Start the foreign pile immediately, because it passes through issuance, authentication, and translation at minimum, making it the longest leg of the whole schedule — how the apostille chain runs for marriage and birth certificates sets out the order.

Three things to settle up front. First, the Philippines does not recognize marriage by proxy: Article 3(3) requires both parties to appear personally and declare before the solemnizing officer, so build the travel around both of you being present. Second, the marrying age is 18 with no exceptions: Article 5 allows marriage at 18 and above, and Article 35(1) makes a marriage void from the beginning where either party is below 18, even with parental consent. RA 11596, approved 10 December 2021, went further and criminalised child marriage: facilitating one carries a fine of not less than P40,000, while solemnizing one — or cohabiting with a child outside wedlock as an adult partner — carries not less than P50,000, plus imprisonment. Third, only listed officers may solemnize: Article 7 lists 5 categories — an incumbent member of the judiciary within the court's jurisdiction; a priest, rabbi, imam or minister duly authorized by his church and registered with the civil registrar general (with at least one party belonging to that church); a ship captain or airplane chief in Article 31 cases; a military commander in Article 32 cases; and a consul-general, consul or vice-consul in Article 10 cases. Booking an unregistered officiant is an Article 35(2) risk, not a formality.

The Filipino Party: Two PSA Certificates Carry the Weight

The Filipino side can be assembled domestically. What matters is getting the right version — the PSA copy, not the city hall copy — how to file a PSA document request, and what security paper means covers ordering both.

The base three:

• PSA Birth Certificate on security paper. Article 12 requires the LCR to call for the original birth certificate (or, failing that, the baptismal certificate) on receiving the application. Names, date of birth, and parents' details are compared field by field, so correct any error before you start rather than after (see correcting an error on a PSA birth certificate).
• PSA CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage Record), showing no marriage on file in the national database. This is the single most important item on this side. Note that a CENOMAR carries no printed expiry and the Family Code sets none. Registrars and embassies commonly want one issued within the last 3 to 6 months — that is administrative practice, not statute, so it is your LCR's position that governs.
• Valid government identification — passport, driver's licence, UMID, voter's ID and similar; which ones are accepted is up to the LCR. Some localities also want a community tax certificate (cedula) (see how to get a cedula) and a barangay certificate of residency. Worth knowing: the closing paragraph of Article 11 states that applicants, their parents or guardians shall not be required to exhibit their residence certificates in any formality connected with securing the licence. Local practice varies, but you can cite it.

Age-dependent additions — these numbers are national, not the LCR's to set:

• 18 to 21: parental consent is mandatory. Article 14 requires a party aged between 18 and 21, not emancipated by a previous marriage, to exhibit to the LCR the consent of the father, mother, surviving parent or guardian, in that order. It must be manifested in writing by the person consenting, appearing personally before the registrar, or in an affidavit made before 2 witnesses and attested by an official authorized to administer oaths.
• 21 to 25: parental advice is mandatory. Article 15 obliges a party between 21 and 25 to ask their parents or guardian for advice on the intended marriage. The consequence is the part people miss: if the advice is not obtained, or is unfavourable, the licence shall not issue until 3 months after the completion of the publication. A sworn statement that advice was sought, with the written advice if any, is attached to the application; if the parents refuse to give any advice, that fact must be stated in the sworn statement.
• Anyone needing consent or advice also needs a marriage counselling certificate. Article 16 requires those parties to attach a certificate from a priest, imam or minister authorized to solemnize under Article 7, or from a marriage counsellor accredited by the proper government agency, showing they have undergone marriage counselling. Failure to attach it suspends issuance of the licence for 3 months from the completion of publication. Where only one party needs consent or advice, the other must still attend the counselling. Note the flip side: issuing within the prohibited period exposes the issuing officer to administrative sanctions but does not affect the validity of the marriage.

Stack those three and the worst case is concrete: a couple aged 21 to 25, unable to obtain parental advice and without counselling, waits 3 months from the end of publication. Checking the age column first is the cheapest thing you can do.

A previous marriage means the most extra paperwork:

• Widowed: the spouse's PSA death certificate. Article 13 requires a previously married applicant to furnish, instead of the birth or baptismal certificate under Article 12, the death certificate of the deceased spouse, the judicial decree of absolute divorce, or the decree of annulment or declaration of nullity. Where the death certificate cannot be secured, the party makes an affidavit setting out that circumstance, their actual civil status, and the name and date of death of the deceased spouse;
• A marriage declared void or annulled: the court decision, the Certificate of Finality, and evidence that the PSA marriage record has been annotated. Missing any of the three gets the file bounced. Many people assume the decision ends it, but without the annotation the earlier marriage is still live in the system (see getting the PSA annotation after a decree);
• A divorce obtained abroad: the Filipino party must first petition a Philippine court for recognition of the foreign divorce, and only after that recognition and the PSA annotation is capacity to remarry restored. The basis is the second paragraph of Article 26, as amended by Executive Order No. 227 of 17 July 1987: where a marriage between a Filipino and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating that spouse to remarry, the Filipino spouse likewise has capacity to remarry under Philippine law. That chain is long, so start it early. Consult a licensed Philippine lawyer about your own case; this article is not legal advice.

If either of the two situations above applies to you — a prior marriage dissolved, or a divorce obtained abroad — do not start gathering documents yet. Confirm first whether that marriage is actually dissolved in law. There is no ordinary divorce law here; only three judicial routes truly end a marriage, and each still requires the PSA annotation to count. The full framework is in can you divorce in the Philippines: the three routes and the PSA annotation.

The Foreign Party: Legal Capacity Is the Item That Stops People

The foreign side is a short list where every item is harder to obtain than anything on the Filipino side.

One: a valid passport — original plus a copy of the data page. Some LCRs also want the current visa page or entry stamp and evidence of lawful stay in the Philippines (extension receipts, ACR I-Card). Whether and which items are required follows that LCR's current list.

Two: the Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage, the item that deserves the most attention. The basis is Article 21: where either or both parties are citizens of a foreign country, before a marriage licence can be obtained they must submit a certificate of legal capacity to contract marriage issued by their respective diplomatic or consular officials. The same article's second paragraph provides that stateless persons or refugees may instead submit an affidavit stating the circumstances showing such capacity. It stops more couples than anything else, for three reasons:

• Practice varies enormously by country — and it tightened at the end of 2023. Some posts issue the certificate as Article 21 describes: the Australian Embassy in Manila issues a Certificate of No Impediment and describes it on its own page as "the equivalent of the Philippines' Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage". Others cannot: the US Embassy states plainly that the United States government does not maintain marriage records and "cannot issue certificates of U.S. citizens' legal capacity to marry", offering instead to notarize the citizen's own statement as an ordinary affidavit; Canada likewise issues only a "statement in lieu of certificate of non-impediment" and warns on its own page that some foreign governments may not accept it. Here is the change most guides have not caught: PSA Memorandum Circular No. 2023-16 of 31 July 2023 directed LCRs to accept locally notarized affidavits in lieu of the certificate — but only until 31 October 2023. After that lapsed, PSA's stated position returned to strict Article 21 compliance, with country-specific relief granted only by circular. Memorandum Circular No. 2023-23 of 13 December 2023 is the worked example, covering British nationals: those resident in the UK must submit an apostilled Certificate of No Impediment from their UK register office, while those already resident in the Philippines or elsewhere submit an Affidavit of Freedom to Marry sworn before the British Embassy in Manila. So the widely repeated "just file an affidavit instead" describes a window that closed on 31 October 2023. Do not plan on it.
• It depends on an underlying document from home, which normally has to carry an apostille obtained in that country before it can be used here. The Philippines acceded to the Hague Apostille Convention on 12 September 2018, in force for it from 14 May 2019, and China has applied it since 7 November 2023, so documents moving between them take the apostille route rather than double legalisation. One point almost nobody spells out: Article 1 of that Convention expressly does not apply to documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents. So the legal capacity certificate or affidavit your embassy produces in Manila cannot itself be apostilled. The apostille belongs on the underlying document issued in the home country — the UK CNI, the foreign divorce decree, the foreign death certificate — and must be obtained in the issuing country. PSA's British circular tracks this exactly: apostille required on the UK-issued CNI, nothing extra on the Manila-sworn affidavit. Whether a particular city hall additionally wants the embassy paper run through DFA authentication is local practice with no national basis — ask that one LCR.
• It carries its own validity period, and that period is not in the law. Article 21 says only that it must be submitted; it fixes no duration. The issuing post writes the expiry itself, commonly 3 to 6 months from issue. The Australian Embassy in Manila describes the Philippine side candidly: "The Philippine Government normally does not accept a CNI issued more than 6 months prior to the date of marriage", and "The Philippine Local City Civil Registry usually accepts CNI issued by the Australian Embassy in the Philippines only." Note the hedges — "normally", "usually". That is an embassy describing administrative practice, not quoting a statute. Obtain it too early, let the wedding date slip, and you are redoing it — and redoing it usually means re-pulling the underlying home-country document too.

For Chinese nationals the practical route is usually one of two: have a Chinese notary office notarize a declaration of no subsisting marriage (divorced or widowed applicants adding notarized divorce or death documents), obtain the apostille under current rules, and bring the set; or have the Chinese embassy or consulate in the Philippines notarize the corresponding declaration or issue the applicable certificate. Availability, requirements, and form follow the current rules of the mission and the notary offices — confirm before you fix a wedding date, and do not rely on what worked for someone else a few years ago.

Three: divorce or bereavement documents. Divorce decrees, divorce certificates, and spousal death certificates must carry an apostille from the country that issued them, with an English translation in the form the LCR wants. Documents issued in China are in Chinese and Philippine offices work in English, so the translation step is not optional.

Four: items some LCRs add — a home-country birth certificate with authentication and translation, recent photographs, or a sworn affidavit signed by the applicant. Variation widens the further you get from the capital region, so ask before you travel.

Legal capacity, authentication and translation — how many counters before the wedding date? → document authentication and translation service

What You Do Together: The Application, the 10-Day Posting, and the Counseling

With both personal sets complete there is still a batch that only the two of you together can produce, and skipping it means no licence.

• The Application for Marriage License. Article 11 requires each contracting party to file a separate sworn application with the proper LCR, specifying 10 items: full name; place of birth; age and date of birth; civil status; if previously married, how, when and where that marriage was dissolved or annulled; present residence and citizenship; degree of relationship of the parties; the father's full name, residence and citizenship; the mother's full name, residence and citizenship; and, where the party has neither parent and is under 21, the guardian's full name, residence and citizenship. Everything must match each party's birth certificate and passport exactly. This is where misspellings enter the record, so check letter by letter before signing.
• The posting period is 10 consecutive days, fixed by Article 17. On receiving the applications the LCR prepares a notice containing the full names and residences of the applicants and the other data given, and posts it for 10 consecutive days on a bulletin board outside the LCR office, in a conspicuous place within the building accessible to the general public, requesting anyone aware of an impediment to advise the registrar. The licence issues only after the publication period is complete. Article 18 adds that even where an impediment is known to or brought to the attention of the registrar, they note the particulars and their findings on the application but shall nonetheless issue the licence after the publication period, unless a competent court orders otherwise — and no filing fee or bond is required for that petition. Those 10 days must sit inside your travel plan; couples who book tight tickets get caught here. Stack the age rule on top and a couple aged 21 to 25 without parental advice is looking at 10 days of posting plus 3 months.
• Pre-marriage counseling and the related seminars. Couples are generally required to attend Pre-Marriage Orientation and Counseling, and many localities include family planning and responsible parenthood sessions, run by the city hall, the social welfare office, or an accredited provider, which issue a certificate of attendance. Keep two things apart: the marriage counselling certificate under Article 16 is a statutory requirement triggered by the parental consent or advice tiers, and its absence suspends the licence for 3 months; the PMOC seminar most localities require sits on separate local and special-legislation footing, with providers and schedules varying. The practical effect is identical — no certificate, no licence. Names, schedules, whether booking is needed, and whether an English session is available for the foreign party all vary, so ask early and put it in the itinerary.
• Optional but time-barred: a marriage settlement. Philippine law applies a default property regime, and changing that default requires an agreement executed in writing and signed by both parties before the marriage, registered as prescribed to bind third parties; Article 22(7) also requires the marriage certificate to state whether the parties entered into a settlement and to attach a copy. Signing afterwards will not change the default regime, which makes this the easiest window to miss. If you want one, handle it during the document stage and have a licensed Philippine lawyer draft it.

Every Statutory Deadline in One Table: 120 Days, 10 Days, 15 Days, 3 Months

The numbers scattered through the sections above, collected once. Every line below comes from the Family Code itself (Executive Order No. 209, 1987) and is national — no city hall varies it. Anywhere else in this guide that says "per your LCR's current rules", that is the local layer. Do not mix the two.

• Posting: 10 consecutive days (Art. 17). The licence issues only after the period completes.
• Marriage licence validity: 120 days (Art. 20), from the date of issue, valid in any part of the Philippines, deemed automatically cancelled at expiration if unused. The expiry date is stamped in bold on the face of every licence.
• Parental consent: ages 18 to 21 (Art. 14). Parental advice: ages 21 to 25 (Art. 15).
• Advice not obtained or unfavourable: licence withheld until 3 months after publication completes (Art. 15).
• Counselling certificate missing where consent or advice is needed: issuance suspended 3 months from completion of publication (Art. 16).
• Registration within 15 days (Art. 23): the solemnizing officer must send the duplicate and triplicate copies of the marriage certificate to the LCR of the place where the marriage was solemnized not later than 15 days after the marriage, and take proper receipts; the officer retains the quadruplicate copy and the original marriage licence.
• 30 days in the exempt cases (Art. 30): for marriages under Arts. 27 to 29 (articulo mortis, or a residence with no means of transportation), the officer sends the original affidavit and a legible copy of the marriage contract to the LCR of the municipality where it was performed within 30 days of the ceremony.
• 5 years of cohabitation removes the licence requirement (Art. 34): no licence is necessary for a man and a woman who have lived together as husband and wife for at least 5 years and without any legal impediment to marry each other; both must state those facts in an affidavit, and the solemnizing officer must state under oath that he ascertained their qualifications and found no impediment. This one is heavily abused — a false affidavit does not cure the absence of a licence, and adds a perjury exposure on top.
• Minimum age 18 (Art. 5). A marriage where either party is below 18 is void from the beginning (Art. 35(1)), even with parental consent, with RA 11596 adding criminal liability.
• No valid licence: void from the beginning (Art. 35(3)), except the cases in Chapter 2 (Arts. 27 to 34). This is the heaviest consequence in the guide, and there is no good-faith exception. Article 35(2) does grant one for a different defect — a marriage solemnized by someone not legally authorized survives if either or both parties believed in good faith that the officer had authority. Article 35(3) offers no equivalent relief for a missing licence. A ceremony held on day 121 of a 120-day licence is void from the beginning even if nobody realised — and under Article 20 that expiry date was stamped in bold on the face of the licence all along. Contrast this with Article 16 above: a missing counselling certificate sanctions the issuing officer and leaves the marriage valid; a missing licence unmakes the marriage.
• The venue is statutory too (Art. 8): the marriage must be solemnized publicly in the judge's chambers or open court, in the church, chapel or temple, or in the office of the consul-general, consul or vice-consul — "and not elsewhere". There are exactly two exceptions: Article 29 cases (articulo mortis or remote places), and where both parties request the solemnizing officer in writing, by sworn statement, to marry them at a house or place they designate. Philippine beach and garden weddings rest on that written request exception — it is not something to assume.
• An under-18 marriage does not become valid with time: RA 11596, Section 6, declares child marriage void ab initio and provides that the action or defense for declaration of absolute nullity shall not prescribe; Section 5 makes these public crimes that anyone may initiate.
• At least 2 witnesses (Art. 3(3)), of legal age, with both parties and the officer present.
• Free for indigent parties (Art. 19): where a party has no visible means of income or income insufficient for subsistence, established by affidavit or oath before the LCR, the licence issues free of charge — and no other sum may be collected as a fee or tax of any kind for its issuance. Article 24 adds that the LCR must prepare the documents and administer the oaths without any charge in both cases, and that documents and affidavits filed in connection with licence applications are exempt from documentary stamp tax.

Treat the 120 days as the master clock. The countdown starts the moment the licence issues, and the wedding date, the validity stamped on the foreign party's legal capacity document, and the progress of the authentication chain all have to land inside it. Schedule backwards: fix the wedding date, subtract the 10-day posting, subtract the lead time and stated validity of the legal capacity certificate, then subtract apostille and translation time for the foreign documents — and leave slack for one round of rework.

How Recent and How Long: One Statutory Number, Two Local Conventions

How long is this certificate good for is the most asked question and the one most guides answer with an invented number. The reality is three stacked windows, only one of which is in the statute. Separating them tells you which you can argue about and which you simply comply with.

1. The issue date of the underlying documents — no statutory period, local convention. A PSA birth certificate or CENOMAR carries no printed expiry, and the Family Code prescribes none. But LCRs and embassies broadly prefer recently issued originals, and the working convention is one issued within the last 3 to 6 months; a copy that has been sitting in a drawer is often sent back. There is no national answer here — ask your LCR.
2. The validity of the legal capacity certificate — set by the issuing post. Article 21 says only that it must be submitted; it fixes no duration. The post writes the expiry on the document, commonly 3 to 6 months. Let it lapse and you redo it, and redoing it often means re-pulling the underlying home-country document. This is the item that triggers cascading rework.
3. The marriage licence itself: 120 days, national, Article 20. This is the one statutory number, and the one to memorise.

While we are here, correct a widely repeated claim: the licence is not usable "only where it was issued". Article 20 reads that the licence "shall be valid in any part of the Philippines for a period of 120 days from the date of issue" and is deemed automatically cancelled at expiration if unused. The geographic constraint sits on the application, not the use: Article 9 requires you to apply to the LCR where either party habitually resides. A licence lawfully issued in Manila does not lapse because the ceremony happens on an island. What actually destroys a requisite is expiry (Art. 20) or no licence at all (Art. 35(3), void from the beginning) — not celebrating it in another city. Venues and individual registrars do have their own preferences, so still ask in advance; just know that is practice, not law.

One concept worth internalizing: an apostille does not refresh the underlying document. It certifies that the signature, seal, and capacity on the paper are genuine. It says nothing about the contents and does nothing about age. If the receiving office considers the underlying certificate stale, re-authenticating it will not help — you have to order a new one.

Fees, current PSA and DFA price lists, and each LCR's view of how recent counts as recent all follow the issuing agency's current notices — those change, so this guide does not fix them. The numbered deadlines above, however, are in the Family Code and you can schedule against them directly.

Why Files Get Bounced, and How to Get It Right in One Pass

Ranked by how often we see them, rejections almost always fall into these.

1. City hall copy instead of the PSA copy. Birth certificates and CENOMARs are expected on PSA security paper, and local copies are routinely refused.
2. Name spellings that disagree across three documents. Passport, PSA record, and legal capacity certificate — any two out of step and the office questions whether it is the same person. The three usual patterns are a romanized Chinese name forced into the local first-middle-last structure, a middle name that exists in the record but not in the passport, and a reversed surname and given name. The earlier you catch it the cheaper it is: clerical and typographical errors can go through an administrative correction procedure, while substantive changes usually require a court petition, and those are very different levels of cost.
3. Foreign documents lacking authentication or an English translation. Divorce decisions, death certificates, and home-country marital status documents need the apostille at origin plus a translation in the accepted form.
4. An incomplete file on a previous marriage. A court decision with no Certificate of Finality, or no PSA annotation. The decision is step one; the annotation is what makes it real in the system.
5. Missing counselling certificate, or one from a provider the LCR does not recognize. Ask which providers that office accepts before you enrol; and if you fall in the consent or advice age tiers, the cost of missing it is a 3-month suspension of issuance under Article 16.
6. Not enough runway. The 10-day posting was never in the plan, the licence passed its 120 days, or the legal capacity certificate expired before the wedding date.
7. No registration within 15 days after the ceremony. This does not affect the validity of the marriage, but it delays the PSA copy of your marriage certificate — and that in turn stalls the 13(a) spousal visa, recognition abroad, and everything downstream. See registering the marriage and getting the PSA marriage certificate. Budget the real lead time as well: after the local registrar files the record it still has to be endorsed to the PSA, and a PSA copy on security paper typically becomes available 2 to 4 months after a Metro Manila wedding and 6 months or more after a provincial one. Those are administrative timelines, not statutory deadlines. Requesting inside that window just produces a "negative certificate" — the fix is to go back to the LCR of the place of marriage and have the record endorsed, not to keep queueing at PSA.

Four rules for getting it right in one pass: lock down the specific LCR and get its current list; start foreign documents immediately and fill in local ones later; keep spare copies and clean scans of everything, because plenty of offices retain originals; and compare both names against the passports letter by letter before signing any form. If the wedding itself is happening on an island rather than at a city hall, our destination wedding and beach wedding cost guide covers venue, season and budget separately from this legal track.

A filter for choosing help along the way: anyone telling you they will handle everything and guarantee the outcome should be ruled out. The licence rests with the LCR and any later visa rests with the Bureau of Immigration, nobody can promise on their behalf, and a promise like that is usually paid for somewhere else in the deal.

This article is general information and not legal advice; for the validity of a previous marriage, recognition of a foreign divorce, or drafting a marriage settlement, consult a licensed Philippine lawyer about your own case. If your file involves documents to be pulled from abroad, a previous marriage to resolve, or a wedding date already locked in, set out both nationalities, the date, and what you already hold, and let Yixing assemble and authenticate the foreign side of the file in one pass.