The hardest part of getting married here is a single sheet of paper that your own country probably won’t issue.
Everything else is manageable.
A German wedding has one legal act and any number of celebrations arranged around it. The legal act happens at a Standesamt or registry office, runs about fifteen minutes, and is the only thing that actually marries you. A church service or a ceremony on a beach carries no legal weight by itself.
That catches people out, especially anyone from a country where the officiant signs the license and it’s done.
How the Registry Office Works
You file your intention to marry at the registry office covering the place one of you lives. If neither of you lives in Germany, you file at the office where the wedding is meant to happen.
The office then checks whether anything blocks the marriage. Once it confirms that nothing does, you have six months to go through with it. Let that window close and the entire check starts over.
Witnesses have been optional since 1998. Bring up to two or bring none, and the marriage is equally valid either way.
Eighteen is the minimum age, full stop. Family courts used to be able to waive it for sixteen and seventeen year olds, and since 2017 they cannot.
Same-sex couples have been able to marry since October 2017. Same procedure, same paperwork, same word for it. Registered partnerships from the old system still exist for those who had them. Those couples can convert to marriage at the registry office free of charge.
The Certificate Your Country Probably Won’t Issue
If your capacity to marry falls under foreign law, German law wants a certificate from your home authorities. It has to state that nothing in that law blocks the marriage. It’s called an Ehefähigkeitszeugnis, and it’s good for six months.
The United States doesn’t issue one. Neither do plenty of other countries, and some issue a document that doesn’t meet the German requirements.
The route around that is a formal exemption granted by the president of the regional appeals court. The court then does the job your home authority would have done and checks your home law for obstacles itself. You apply through the registry office rather than the court, which is a mercy, because the registry office knows the forms by heart. ;-)
The exemption, once granted, is also valid for six months.
Now the part to take seriously. The courts say openly that processing times vary wildly and that they can’t work around a wedding date you have already booked. Some cases are settled in weeks. Others need months of correspondence with a foreign ministry.
Get the exemption first. Book the venue second.
Underneath all that sit the ordinary documents. Passport, birth certificate, proof of where you live, and evidence that any earlier marriage has ended. Foreign papers usually need an apostille, which is one more reason to gather them before moving to Germany. Any translation has to come from a translator sworn in by a German court.
Denmark Is the Shortcut, and It Is Entirely Legal
There’s a reason so many international couples marry in Denmark and drive home the same week.
The Danish family authority runs the whole check centrally, asks for far fewer documents, and doesn’t want a certificate from your home country at all. It issues its own instead. In straightforward cases the review takes days.
A Danish marriage is fully valid here. Your German registry office doesn’t have to recognize it, because a treaty between the two countries settled that generations ago. The office simply records it.
It isn’t open to everybody, though. Lawful residence in the Schengen area is a condition, which rules out asylum seekers and anyone on a tolerated stay. The authority screens for sham marriages, can demand more documents, and can call both of you in for an interview. The review fee runs to three figures and stays with them if the application fails. The rules on proving lawful residence tightened again in 2026, so check the current requirements on the Danish authority’s English pages before you plan anything.
Nobody Here Has to Change Their Name
Germany has never required couples to share a surname, and plenty of them simply keep what they came in with. What changed in May 2025 is everything else on the menu.
Two people marrying can now take a genuine double name built from both surnames. Either order, with or without a hyphen, and two parts at most, so nobody ends up with a chain of four.
Children can carry that double name as their birth name. Couples who married long before the reform can switch to one retroactively, which a fair number of them have done.
None of it has to be decided at the ceremony. Leave the question open and settle it at the registry office whenever you’ve made up your minds.
What Actually Happens at a German Wedding
The registry office part is short and usually small. The couple, a handful of people, fifteen minutes, done. The party is a separate event, sometimes that afternoon and sometimes weeks later.
The night before belongs to the Polterabend. Guests turn up at the couple’s place and smash porcelain on the ground, on the theory that the racket scares off bad luck. Then the couple sweeps it up together, in front of everyone, and that part is the actual point.
After the ceremony you may find a log and a two-person saw waiting outside. The newlyweds have to cut through it while the guests watch, and it goes terribly until the two of them stop pulling against each other. Subtle, we are not. :-)
One thing you won’t see is anybody being given away. That role doesn’t exist in the German ceremony, and the bride walks in on her own or alongside the groom. Couples who want the aisle version borrow it, and nobody minds.
Marriage also changes your tax class and can shift your residence status. Both of those deserve reading up on separately. The permit side is covered on immigration to Germany, and the wider picture of settling in here sits on living in Germany.