chinese wedding, help needed

Unpossible

hey,
I could use the help of anyone here who has knowledge of getting married in china. I have applied and gotten my certificate de Coutume from the Irish embassy in China. The problem is that my soon to be father in law went to the registry office in NanJing (china) to make sure we have the right paperwork. They told him I need some kind of document to verify that I am single from the Irish government and that it has to be stamped by the chinese embassy in Ireland. They said the Certificate de Coutume is not enough.
Me and my Fiancee are basically freaking right now, I am franticlly searching the internet to see what they are looking for but I cannot find any reference for Irish people getting married over there (although I did find something for UK people, but it talks about letters from commonwealth offices or something). We have tried calling the chinese embassies in Ireland and Finland (we live in finland), but neither are answering.
So if anyone has any experience with getting married there could you reply here or send me a pm ? Do they just want the Certificate de Coutume to be verified by the chinese embassy here?


Thanks,
-a panicing Unpossible-

tampopo

Hello,

I pm'd you earlier, but further to your email, I went to the Dept of Foreign Affairs to get some letter/statement or other. It simply stated that I was single and/or that there was no record of me marrying in this state. I'm not sure if I got similar documents from the US and Canadian embassies, cos I lived in both countries for more than six months.

I brought it to the embassy of my wife's country and they translated it officially for the civil servants where I got married. That seemed to suffice.

In the UK the Dept of Foreign Affairs is called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, though 99.99999% of the time it's simply known as The Foreign Office.

I think if you write to either of the embassies in Finland you may be more successful in receiving a reply, they being obliged to answer to postal queries rather than random phone call queries...I dunno...

They may of course, simply want the certificate the Coutume verified/translated into Chinese like you suggest.

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

T.

Unpossible

Ok, it turns out that the cert I got from Beijing needs to be stamped by the chinese DFA (but it looks like I have to be a resident there for that). For the chinese embassy here to stamp it, I first have to get it stamped by two seperate finnish agencies/departments.

So we are going with option 3, a new letter from the Irish DFA, which I will get stamped by the chinese embassy in dublin. Then it should all be ok.

Note: DFA = Department of Foreign Affairs

tampopo

Good, I'm glad it's worked out for you. Have a good day. when it comes. Are you going to live in Ireland or Finland, or China?

Unpossible

Good, I'm glad it's worked out for you. Have a good day. when it comes. Are you going to live in Ireland or Finland, or China?

Yeah, plus at least now if someone has a similar problem here I can point them in the right direction.

We dont speak finnish, so there is a very slight possibility of finding an IT job here. So we will probably move to Ireland. Getting her her VISA will be a whole other problem