German Spouse Visa Guide - How I processed my German spouse Visa

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This is just a summary of who I got my Germany spouse Visa.

Actually I just gather the links I posted before.

Please note that as laws change, there might be things I have said that are not applicable anymore.

Enjoy reading!

• How to get a German Spouse Visa?
• Do you have the complete Steps or Instructions on how to get a Spouse Visa?
• How did you get your visa approved?
• What are the necessary papers you should gather in applying for marriage?

In this post I share to you on the procedures or steps I did from Marriage Requirements in the Philippines up to Registration as a Resident at the local Town/City Hall or Rathaus here in Germany.

1. Marriage Requirements

2. Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)

3. Pre Marriage Counselling

4. Wedding or Marriage in the Philippines

5. DFA Red Ribbon

6. Endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO

7. CFO-SMEF-COW Seminar

8. German Spouse Visa Requirements

9. Basic German Language Visa Requirement, Required or Not?

10. German Visa Appointment at the German Embassy in Manila

11. Interview at the German Embassy in Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines

12. Approval of My German Spouse Visa

13. My Flight FOR and My Arrival IN Germany

14. After Arrival - Registration as a Resident at your local Town Hall/City Hall in Germany

Is 30 Days enough to get married in the Philippines?

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How long would it take to process all the necessary and important papers to get married in the Philippines?
How long would it take to process papers for a Church Wedding?
How long would it take to process papers for a Civil Wedding?

Marriage in the Philippines takes time. Best case, 30 days would be enough, worst case, 30 days would not be enough. Unfortunately, I could not share any information about Church wedding in the Philippines simply because I don't have any experience. Just Civil Wedding.

All marriage papers that you are going to process takes time and patience. The factors below will give you an idea and approximation on how many days you should consider to get married (Civil Wedding) in the Philippines.

• Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis")
  
• Pre Marriage Counselling
• Marriage Notice posted or announced in the church for 10 days
• CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, issued by the NSO)
• Saturdays and Sundays
• Holidays
• Absences or leaves of the Employees who will process your papers
• Availability of the Judge who will conduct the wedding

With your 30 days, 10 days are already taken due to Marriage Notice which will be posted or announced in the church. So if you are a foreigner or an OFW (overseas worker), be very extra careful in planning your marriage. It would be best if you already have all the necessary marriage papers and just process the papers which can only be made in the Philippines, after you arrived there. Note that the list I have mentioned above will depend from case to case. For example, if you are a minor who wants to get married, you might need a Parent's Consent paper. So this would mean an additional time.

The wedding ceremony will be held in a court room and it will only last for about 10 minutes. Processing of the marriage papers will take days but the wedding ceremony will only take 10 minutes. Congratulations on your wedding!

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Endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO

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What is endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO?
How long will the endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO take?

NSO = "National Statistics Office"

Your Certificate of Marriage will be endorsed at the NSO after your marriage. But it is endorsed by batch maybe like by date of marriage. This procedure is not a problem if you and your spouse are both Filipinos. If you want to be with your spouse in Germany or any foreign country and you need to speed things up for your VISA, you must endorse your Certificate of Marriage immediately and personally at the NSO. In my experience, I went to the local NSO office at Cebu City and submitted the documents personally.

When your paper is endorsed, it will be put inside the NSO database. This means that your document is being archived not just in your local government for example in my case, not just in Cebu but archived in the Philippine documents database or archive. The duration of the paper processing usually takes about 1-2 months.

Your “ordinary” Certificate of Marriage will look like this:



















After the paper processing at NSO and you requested for a copy, your Certificate of Marriage will be like this:

This is now called an NSO Certificate of Marriage. There is really no big difference of the contents between an “ordinary” Certificate of Marriage and an NSO Certificate of Marriage. Your “ordinary” Certificate of Marriage will just be scanned, they put it in the database or archive it and then when you get a copy of your Certificate of Marriage from the NSO, it will be on a Yellow Paper or what they call the SECPA (Security Paper). It will have an NSO Seal at the upper left side, a document number and a bar code at the lower left side, and a signature from the NSO Administrator at the bottom right side.

This is important because most papers requested by institutions, schools, universities, jobs and especially papers requested for purposes abroad, such as VISAs, are the ones from the NSO. One good thing about this is that you can request a copy online at www.e-census.com.ph and it will be delivered at your door step.


As far as I can remember, these were the cost of an NSO Certificate of Marriage and an NSO Birth Certificate:

Requested at www.e-census.com.ph:
NSO Certificate of Marriage – 400 Pesos per copy
NSO Birth Certificate – 300 Pesos per copy

Requested at your local NSO office:
NSO Certificate of Marriage – 180 Pesos per copy
NSO Birth Certificate – 150 Pesos per copy

*Note that these prices were as of February 2008. Prices may subject to change.

Note also that not all provinces in the Philippines had their own local NSO office.
If you live in these provinces, your only option would be requesting your NSO paper online at www.e-census.com.ph.

Related Posts:

• Marriage Requirements in the Philippines
  
• Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)
• Pre Marriage Counselling
• Wedding or Marriage in the Philippines
• DFA Red Ribbon
• CFO-SMEF-COW Seminar
• German Spouse Visa Requirements

Wedding or Marriage in the Philippines

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There are two ways where you can get married in the Philippines. First, you can get married in a church (Church Wedding). Second, is what they called Civil Wedding or Civil Marriage. I will talk more about the Civil Wedding because I don't have experience on Church Wedding yet.

Once you have all the requirements gathered in getting married in the Philippines (and no one objected on your Marriage Notice posted or announced in the church for 10 days), both you and your partner are allowed to marry.

Your civil wedding will be conducted by a judge. You can not choose the judge. The judge's names will be raffled/shuffled on to which couple they will conduct the wedding. This is a new rule. The reason for this new rule is that many marriages before are not legal or are not taking the necessary steps to get married.

For example, it is a requirement to attend the Pre-Marriage Counseling to obtain a Certificate of Attendance that you really attend the seminar. Many couples are lazy enough to attend this seminar even though it only last for 8 hours (in a day). They just pay the judge a high price and the judge will do the paperworks for the couple. What the couple only have to do is just sign a number of papers and that's it, done.

Because of this, many judges were suspended and many “married” couples are not accepted as valid or legal. That simply means they have to do the paper processing and get married again! A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME! As I remember, a friend of mine told me she paid 5,000 to 7,000 Pesos (some even paid for 5 digits especially the foreigners) and believe me, IT'S NOT WORTH IT! When I processed my marriage papers, I only paid around 2,000 Pesos or lower.

On the Wedding Day, a personnel in charge will type your information on the CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE paper. You have to make sure EVERY DETAIL typed on this paper are CORRECT. If it happens that some details are mistakenly, incorrectly or wrongly typed, immediately tell the personnel in charge or the typist to make the necessary corrections.

The wedding ceremony will be held inside the court (but you can always choose that your Civil Wedding will be held in a different place like in your house, in a garden, hall, or restaurant but of course you have to pay the judge for this). In my wedding, it only last for about 10 minutes. “What? 10 minutes? But the paper processing take days?“ Yes, you are right ^_^! But anyway, congratulations on your wedding! ^_^

Related Posts:

• Marriage Requirements in the Philippines
  
• Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)
• Pre Marriage Counselling
• DFA Red Ribbon
• Endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO
• CFO-SMEF-COW Seminar

Pre Marriage Counselling

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Before you can get a Marriage License, you and your spouse will need to attend a Pre-Marriage Counseling. The Pre-Marriage Counseling is just like a seminar. The topics you will get from the seminar are about Marriage, Relationship, Sex, Sex Diseases (HIV, AIDS), and Family Planning. So basically the seminar will discuss about Marriage. The seminar will take place at the Cebu City Health Office.

Before lunch time, you will be given an Application for Marriage License form which should be completed and submitted within the day. Please, please... BE VERY EXTRA CAREFUL of the data you are writing on the form. BE VERY EXTRA CAREFUL of the Names, Dates, Address, EVERYTHING! Please write CLEARLY, NEATLY and I suggest it to be in PRINT FORM and all in CAPITAL/UPPERCASE LETTERS. For example:









If you are not sure about what to answer then you better ask the personnel in charge. If it happens that you have mistakenly, incorrectly or wrongly written/inputted, then you will going to have problems when you apply for a VISA and other papers. Then, you will have additional paper(s) processing, and that is a total WASTE OF TIME!

The duration of the seminar will only be 8 hours (in 1 day). Please be advised that you and your partner should be present during the whole seminar because the counselors or people who conduct the seminar will check your attendance. If you happen to miss a single topic in the seminar for any reason(s) and your attendance is incomplete, they will not let you proceed to the next process. In my experience, a number of couples where advised to take the seminar again because there attendance are incomplete and again that is a total WASTE OF TIME! Remember that this seminar is a Requirement for Marriage License Application.

Related Posts:

• Marriage Requirements in the Philippines
  
• Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)
• Wedding or Marriage in the Philippines
• DFA Red Ribbon
• Endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO
• CFO-SMEF-COW Seminar

Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)

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What is a Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)?
How to get a Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)?

This paper is issued by their diplomatic official in the Philippines. This is called the “Ehefaehigkeitszeugnis” in German and is available from the Local Civil Registry Office or “Standesamt”. The German fiancee/fiance SHOULD have this document ready before his flight to the Philippines.

" ä "= " ae " in German

The requirements for this document depends on the Local Civil Registry Officer in the local town where the German fiancee/fiance lives. In our case the following papers were asked:

German fiancee/fiance:

1. German Passport
2. Internatonal Birth Certificate

Filipino fiancee/fiance:
1. NSO Birth Certificate with Red Ribbon from the DFA
- Note that in the first page you will see a Red Ribbon, your NSO Birth Certificate is actually on the next page.
2. Joint Affidavit of Civil Status with Red Ribbon from the DFA
- Note that in the first page you will see a Red Ribbon, your Joint Affidavit of Civil Status is actually on the next page.
3. Joint Affidavit of Parental Advice with Red Ribbon from the DFA
- Note that in the first page you will see a Red Ribbon, your Joint Affidavit of Parental Advice is actually on the next page.
4. CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, issued by the NSO)
5. Barangay Certificate
6. Clear Copy of Passport ID with a Certification from the DFA that this is a Certified True Copy


The Filipino fiancee/fiance should submit all documents in Original Copies, unless otherwise stated, per courier to his/her German counterpart.

The German fiancee/fiance should have the documents (from the Filipino fiancee/fiance) Translated to German by a Certified Translator.

DFA = "Department of Foreign Affairs"
NSO = "National Statistics Office"

Note that this paper is a Requirement for Marriage License Application

List of Requirements As of JUNE 2007
Note that these list of requirements might change from time to time or case to case.
For updates please visit the official site of the Embassy of the Republic of the Philippines

Related Posts:

• Marriage Requirements in the Philippine
• Pre Marriage Counselling
• Wedding or Marriage in the Philippines
• DFA Red Ribbon
• Endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO
• Tips for contacting the Embassy

Marriage Requirements in the Philippines between a Philippine and German (Foreign) Citizen

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Good Day to all! In this Blog you will know what requirements/steps I have submitted/made when I and my German Spouse were planning to get married in the Philippines. Just click on the links to see the actual papers.

Marriage Requirements in the Philippines between a Philippine/Filipino/Filipina/Pinoy/Pinay and German/Foreigner/Foreign Citizen

For Widow/Widower:
1. Death Certificate, issued by the Local Civil Registrar's Office
- NSO of deceased husband/wife
- 1 Original Copy and 2 Photocopies
2. CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, issued by the NSO)
- 1 Original Copy and 1 Photocopy
3. Certificate of Attendance, issued by the HRD Office
- 1 Original Copy and 1 Photocopy
4. CEDULA with signature
- 1 Original Copy and 2 Photocopies

For Annulled Marriage:
1. Certificate of Finality of Annulment, issued by the court
- 1 Original Copy and 2 Photocopies
2. Certificate of Registration, from Local Civil Registrar's Office
- 1 Original Copy and 1 Photocopy
3. CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, issued by the NSO)
- 1 Original Copy and 1 Photocopy
4. CEDULA with signature
- 1 Original Copy and 2 Photocopies

For a Foreigner Applicant (German fiancee/fiance):
1. Passport ID
- 2 Photocopies
2. Date of Arrival (Latest), from the passport
- 2 Photocopies
3. Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage
- For details see my other post about “Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage”.
- 1 Original Copy and 3 Photocopies
4. CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, issued by the NSO)
- 1 Original Copy and 1 Photocopy
5. For Divorced applicant
- 1 Original Copy and 2 Photocopies
6. For widow/widower – Death Certificate of deceased
- 1 Original Copy and 2 Photocopies

NOTE:
- Appearance of both applicants is necessary in applying for Marriage license.
- Marriage License will be released after a 10 day posting period.
- At least one of the applicant is a resident of Cebu City(not necessarily from Cebu City).
- Address in the Cedula, Barangay Certificate and Certificate of Attendance must coincide.
- For Naturalized Citizen, bring original and a photocopy of naturalization papers.

Requirements for Marriage License Application (Filipino fiancee/fiance):
1. Birth Certificate
2. Pre Marriage Counselling Certificate of Attendance, issued by the HRD Office (both Filipino and German)
3. CEDULA with Signature
4. Barangay Certificate
5. CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, issued by the NSO)
6. For ages 18-24, appearance of both parents, with valid ID for parental consent or advice
7. At least one of the applicants is a resident of Cebu City
NOTE: Marriage License will be released after a 10 day posting period

NSO = "National Statistics Office"

List of Requirements As of NOVEMBER 2008
Note that these list of requirements might change from time to time or case to case.
For updates, please visit the official site of the Republic of the Philippines:

These List of Requirements were given to us by the Office of the City Civil Registrar. Not all of the requirements listed here are needed, meaning it depends in YOUR SITUATION. In my situation, I (Filipino) was SINGLE, and my Spouse (German) was SINGLE.

The requirements which have TEXTS IN BOLD above signifies that these were the requirements/steps that I have submitted/made based ON MY EXPERIENCE.

Congratulations in your wedding! ^_^

Related Posts:

• Marriage Requirements
• Legal Capacity to Contract Marriage (“Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”)
• Pre Marriage Counselling
• Wedding or Marriage in the Philippines
• DFA Red Ribbon
• Endorsing of Certificate of Marriage to the NSO