So You Want to Get Married in Portugal?
- Rhoda Phillippo Harrington
- May 8, 2024
- 7 min read
Hi there. Last year Tim and I tied the knot in the beautiful village of Sintra in Portugal. It was a lovely day. The journey to our wedding day was filled with twists and turns – Portugal's bureacracy can seem confusing and they say a little knowledge goes a long way so we thought we would put this blog together to help anyone else who decides that Portugal is their ideal wedding destination.
And if you aren’t getting married in Portugal, but have chosen a destination wedding, hopefully some of the stuff covered here is useful too!
We were doing this from Australia so some of this might not be relevant to you, but the Portuguese requirements will be the same whichever country you are planning from.
TO START WITH….
Leave yourself plenty of time, as the Portuguese authorities do not do anything in a hurry and there is no set time scale for what they do. We were advised to allow 6 months at least and this was very tight (read on to learn more!). In short, getting married in Portugal is not a spur of the moment thing.
GETTING THE ORDER RIGHT…..
Before you can start any of the legally required processes, you need to have finalised your wedding location. You can (as we discovered) change this up until about a couple of months before, however to get the ball rolling you need to have determined a venue and a preferred date.
FINDING A VENUE….
There are all sorts of Wedding Planner websites in Portugal and planners in the UK who specialise in Portugal. If, like us, you are at the other side of the world and want something relatively simple, this is much harder to find. If you genuinely want the day to be your own and to work with someone who takes your ideas and requirements and makes them happen then I highly recommend Maria Makarova at https://www.weddingportugal.com/. Their service is pretty unique because you genuinely can pick from a range of options for everything – venue, flowers, hair and make-up, transport, number of guests. The cost of everything is very transparent from the outset. Checklist 1 is a short guide to all the things that you need to think about and you can see more options on their website.
Venues get booked up well in advance so at least 6 months’ notice is needed to lock something in out of season and a great deal more in peak months.
We chose the gardens of the beautiful Tivoli Palace Hotel in Sintra which fitted perfectly with our simple ideas for a small ceremony.
We were able to use the hotel and gardens for our photos and have our small ceremony in a discreet part of the gardens – it was just perfect. If you want to be able to accommodate more guests then deciding whether you want to be indoors or outdoors is very important as there are a large number of options for outdoor weddings but space for guests is very varied.
We looked at several locations with Maria – she was really invaluable in giving us ideas too which is very helpful if you are marrying in a country that you have never visited. You genuinely can get married almost anywhere in Portugal!
And of course if you are choosing outdoors then think about your plan for a wet weather day!
WHAT KIND OF CEREMONY DO YOU WANT?...
We wanted to be legally married in a civil ceremony as well as to have a short ceremony where we exchanged our vows with a Wedding Celebrant. And we wanted to do this all at the same time rather than in a registry office for the legal part and the Tivoli Palace Hotel for the vow exchange. Whether you do it separately or together here are the matters that you need to have in place.
Let’s start with getting legally married.
FIND A GOOD LAWYER TO LEAD YOU THROUGH THE PROCESS….
As I mentioned earlier the process is incredibly bureaucratic and having a lawyer in Portugal who keeps everything moving on your behalf is invaluable. Even if you opt only for a civil ceremony in a registry it is best to have your Portuguese lawyer conduct all of the correspondence with them as no one at the Registry will speak English.
We used Barbara Mendes de Magalhaes at Raposo Sa Miranda and Associates in Lisbon https://pra.pt/en/ and would have been lost without her! They were very reasonably priced and went the extra mile to lead us through the labyrinth!!
Checklist 2 has all the document requirements for getting legally married in Portugal. Here are some of our lessons learned!
· Key documents have to be “apostilled” a term neither of us had ever heard of before. Getting something “apostilled” is a special service and adds to the time it takes to get your documentation together (it is not the same as having the document “notorised” by a JP). Key documents include items like a birth certificate which had to be issued within the last 6 months, certificate of eligibility to marry; and death certificates or divorce decrees for previous relationships. And if these have to come from other countries (ours had to come from England, NZ and Australia) this also adds to your time line.
· Once all your documents have been received by the lawyer in Portugal they submit them to the Head of the Civil Registry for preliminary approval of the marriage process. If approved this means that you have 6 months from the date of the approval in which to get married.
· Don’t be surprised if you get asked for more information (duly apostilled) once the Head of the Civil Registry starts their process. We had to provide for each of us the Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage from Australia – even though we had submitted one for me! We also had to provide proof (not just our passports) of our resident status in Australia. Don't get stressed, just go with the flow.
· You will have to courier all these documents to Portugal so leave time for that too and make sure that you have registered delivery on the documents so that you can track them.
· Your Portuguese lawyer will translate these documents for you for a small fee before submitting to the Civil Registry.
· In order to get a Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage, you have to submit notorised documents to DFAT (www.smartraveller.gov.au and authentications.nsw@dfat.gov.au) so leave time to do this in advance of having to send all your documents off to Portugal.
· In addition to the Registrar who conducts the legal ceremony, and your lawyer, and your translator, you will need two witnesses who must both be Portuguese citizens. No-one is allowed to double up!! So we ended up with two witnesses organised from our lawyers office (for a small fee!)
Your celebration ceremony plans.
As I mentioned above Maria’s services were very customised. We got to choose how much we wanted to be involved in creating the script for our ceremony and we also were given options of different types of script. We wrote our own vows and based on the information which we gave to Maria she chose a lovely celebrant Alexandra Neves (https://www.weddingportugal.com/services/celebrants/celebrant-alexandra-en-pt/)
who was wonderful on the day and a few days beforehand asked for other information about us that she could use to personalise the ceremony.
We chose the following services from Maria:
*Venue hire plus a small table and a couple of chairs
*Champagne and glasses for a toast at the end
*Wedding certificate as a momento of the day
*Transport to and from the venue for us and the celebrant
*Photographer – Joao Lourenco -recommended by Maria was fantastic, did not intrude on our day and was very reasonably priced https://lourenco-photography.com/destination-wedding-photographer-lisbon/?lang=en
*Flowers – think about this well in advance as finding exactly what you want may take time. I wanted a Scottish thistle, an English rose, a silver fern and an orchid to represent the places that I've lived - we improvised on the thistle!!
SO NOW YOU ARE ALL SET!
Some other final things to think about which ended up being important.
How are you getting your wedding clothes to the destination – you don’t want them
lost in your luggage during flights etc. Personally we took ours as carry on to ensure that they made it. And if you need alterations to any of your wedding clothes how are you going to do this away from home? I was very lucky that my sister-in-law made my beautiful dress and sent me off spare buttons etc. Check her out at @harrington-workroom Instagram.
It can be lonely if you are the only English speakers at the ceremony. We had our besties Tina and John there with us and they had written a lovely speech which made our day very personal and special
Have some local currency with you on the day to tip for kindness or use for unexpected extras.
Most of all, enjoy every minute!!
Checklist 1 – options for your wedding day
What | Choices |
Ceremony type | Legal, church, celebration |
Transport | To and from venue, other? |
Celebrant | Local, international, experience |
Ceremony script | Personalised or standard |
Wedding certificate | Ceremonial, legal or both |
Photographs |
|
Flowers for bride, groom and party | Customised or standard |
Decoration of venue | Simple or customised |
Hair and Make-Up | Where and on which day |
Music | Live or audio |
Wedding Cake and Champagne | At the venue or elsewhere |
Checklist 2
A - legal marriage document requirements
Document | Author/Owner | Special Requirements |
Power of Attorney | Portuguese Lawyer | Prepared once they have all your documents |
Passports | Self | Copies of all pages |
Birth Certificates | Birth Registry Office | Apostilled, less than 6 months old |
Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage | Apostilled, less than 6 months old | |
Divorce Decree |
| Apostilled |
Death Certificate |
| Apostilled |
B – other information required
Details of:
· Professions and level of studies
· Intended residence after the marriage
· Any children in common or from a previous relationship
· Full names of the parents of the children
· Marital status
· Complete address
· Place of birth
· The property regime they intend to adopt*
· Mode of marriage desired (civil, catholic or civil under religious form)
· Complete identification of the translator of the marriage ceremony who must be present
· Name and surname of the parents of the spouses.
*In Portugal you must indicate the property regime that you wish to apply to your marriage as well as the law (Portuguese as the place of marriage or the law of the country where you reside) applicable to your marriage.
In Portugal there are three regimes and it is important that you get your lawyer to advise you about this.
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