Marriage without going to Church or ceremony in Ireland

IrishMayo26

hi all ,

Me(irish) and my gf (Korean) are planning to get married. We were wondering is it possible to just go to a marriage office and sign and boom married,
or do we have to have a ceremony ??

Thanks

Ghekko

You don't need any special ceremony. Have a look at attached to see what you need to provide and what the process is, given that your partner isn't Irish.

https://www.hse.ie/eng/births-deaths-and-marriages/how-to-get-married-in-ireland/

tomfoolery60

IrishMayo26 wrote: »

hi all ,

Me(irish) and my gf (Korean) are planning to get married. We were wondering is it possible to just go to a marriage office and sign and boom married,
or do we have to have a ceremony ??

Thanks

You can do just that in the registration office on Grand Canal Street. Like any marriage you've to pre-register with them at least 3 months before and as the previous poster noted, there are more hoops if one of you is not Irish. You'll need two witnesses as well I believe.

Peregrinus

You don't "just sign" at the register office. There is a ceremony. You can minimise it and have it as low-key as you like, but it can't be avoided. It's the ceremony, not the signing of paperwork, that actually makes you "married" in the eyes of the law.

The ceremony is know as "solemnization". It requires, at a mimimum, the couple, a solemniser and two witnesses. The ceremony has to be conducted in a form approved by the Registrar General, and must be held in a place open to the public. At a minimum, it has to include:

(a) declarations by both spouses, in the presence of each other, the solemniser and the witnesses, that they know of no legal bar to the marriage; and

(b) declarations by both spouses, in the presence of each other, the solemniser and the witnesses, that they accept one another as spouses.

The solemniser will want to satisfy himself or herself that both spouses the nature of the ceremony and the siginficance of the declarations that they make. And if anybody involved in the ceremony - spouse or witness - does not have a sufficient knowledge of the language of the ceremony (presumably English) to understand it, an interpreter has to be on hand to translate the ceremony for the benefit of that person. The spouses have to arrange and pay for the interpreter.

thelastpogue

Myself and the wife done this. We got married abroad but the ceremony abroad was not legal, just more of a celebration! So we went to the registry office near Pearse St in Dublin and had the minimal ceremony with 2 friends as witnesses. We had no readings or music prayers or even rings ect, literally met the solemniser 5 mins before the ceremony then she read out her legal declerations and it was all done in 10minutes. We did of course have to give the standard 3 months notice and as has been said above you may have more hoops to jump through marrying someone born outside Ireland.