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Can you get married in France if you don’t live here?

France has a booming wedding industry and many of its beautiful and historic chateaux - including more than a few owned by foreigners - hire themselves out as the perfect romantic wedding venue. But what's the legal position around getting married in France as a non-resident?

Published: 2 January 2023 16:38 CET
Can you get married in France if you don't live here?
Photo by ALAIN JOCARD / AFP

Google ‘French wedding chateau’ and you’ll get thousands of results, complete with romantic pictures of beautiful brides, handsome grooms and historic country houses, but not all of these ‘weddings’ are quite what they seem.

Getting married in France – as in any country – is a legal procedure as well as a romantic celebration and there are certain hoops to jump through in order to make sure that the wedding is a legally binding ceremony. These include an interview at the commune where you intend to marry, a lot of paperwork and publishing the bans at least 10 days in advance (unless there are exceptional circumstances).

READ ALSO What you need to know about getting married in France

There are also different rules depending on whether you are a French citizen, a French resident or a visitor who simply wants to hold your wedding here.

French resident or citizen

If one or both of the couple is a French citizen or has permanent residency in France, then you have the right to get married here. 

You need to make an appointment at the mairie and begin collecting the paperwork together – full details here.

There is one important caveat for foreigners – you must also be able to legally marry in your home country. This can be an issue for same-sex couples whose home country does not allow them to marry. 

Non-resident

If you do not have citizenship or residency, it may still be possible to marry here – you are required to have some kind of ‘close link’ to the commune in which you want to marry.

This is up to local authorities to decide upon, but common examples include the parents of one half of the couple living in the commune (whether they are French or not) while second-home owners may be able to demonstrate that they have a close link to the commune.

No link

If you and your family have no particular links to France, then you may not be able to legally marry here. Here are the options;

Just a party – the most common tactic for people who don’t live here is to have their beautiful celebration at the chateau of their choice and then do the legal bit at another time.

In many ways this is the best of both worlds – you can still have a romantic ceremony and/or fabulous party with all your nearest and dearest in a beautiful setting, but you don’t need to worry about filling in French paperwork and trying to follow a marriage ceremony that must, by law, be in French. You can then do the legal bit at the register office in the country where you live either before or after the ceremony.

Most wedding venue chateaux are perfectly upfront about the fact that the ceremony they’re offering is not legally binding, and all responsible venue owners will make it clear to the couple that they will have to do the legal paperwork themselves. 

One-month residency – if you are determined to be legally married in France, you can do so by establishing residency here. 

At least one member of the couple must have “resided continuously for at least one month” in the commune in which you want to marry. There is no requirement to have a residency card, nor for your tax residency to be in France.

You will need to provide proof of your stay, but this can be in the form of a simple attestation (affidavit) from your host or host institution (eg a hotel) with the dates of your stay.

Once you have been in France for a month, you can then visit the mairie and begin the process – this is the same as for permanent residents and includes a file of paperwork and an interview with the registrar. 

The one-month residency must be before the bans are read, and the bans must be read a minimum of 10 days before the ceremony – so in total you must arrive in France six weeks before the ceremony date.

The wedding ceremony must be in French, but you can have a translator, and the registrar can do this themselves (if they speak English obviously).

The civil ceremony will probably have to be in the mairie (see below).

French overseas territories – if you don’t have a spare month to establish residency in France, you can get married in some of France’s overseas territories without this requirement.

The French overseas territories of;

  • Nouvelle-Calédonie
  • Polynésie française
  • Saint-Barthélémy
  • Saint-Martin
  • Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon
  • Wallis-et-Futuna

allow you to marry without residency. However other French overseas territories, such as the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Gaudeloupe, do not.

Consular wedding – in certain circumstances it may be possible for you to be married at the consulate of your home country in France, or in front of a consular official, but this depends on your home country’s policy.

Most consulates offer this only in exceptional circumstances.

Mairie

Even French residents and/or citizens usually cannot actually get married at the chateau, and this is because France is a secular country so only civil marriages are legally recognised. In order to make your marriage legally binding you will need to have a civil ceremony in a public building in the commune where you have registered your paperwork.

The ‘public building’ is usually the mairie, but can be a village hall or other community building and the ceremony is performed by a local official – usually the mayor or deputy mayor.

Once you have done the civil ceremony, you can then have either a religious wedding or a lakeside chateau ceremony or whatever else you want, but it’s the mairie bit that makes the marriage legally binding.

(Just photos? Never mind not doing a legal wedding – some couples don’t even have the party in France, they just bring their wedding outfits along on their honeymoon and pose for photos in front of French landmarks like the Eiffel Tower).

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READER QUESTIONS

Does it help with moving to France to be married to a French person?

If you’re a citizen of a country outside the European Union, moving to France to live is administratively much more difficult – but are there any advantages to being married to someone who is French?

Published: 30 May 2024 11:26 CEST
Does it help with moving to France to be married to a French person?

You’ve met, fallen in love with and married a French citizen. Congratulations. 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t give you an automatic right to French citizenship, or even – necessarily – the right to live in France. You will still have some bureaucratic hoops to jump through, even though the process is a little bit less complicated.

You’ll also benefit from having a native French speaker on hand to translate the various forms for you – although unless your Frenchie is actually a lawyer, don’t assume that they are knowledgeable about French immigration law, most people know very little about the immigration processes of their own country (because, obviously, they never have to interact with them). 

Visa

If you were living in France when you did the marriage deed, you’ll have already done the visa thing, anyway. But if you married outside France, and have never lived in France, there are still things to do, including – and most pressingly – getting a visa.

The thing is, being married to a French person isn’t quite the live-in-France carte blanche that some people may think – you still need to go through the visa process and gather documents including your marriage certificate and proof of your spouse’s French nationality.

The main benefit is that anyone who is married to a French citizen can apply for a family visa (sometimes known as a spouse visa). This allows you to come to France without a job and it gives you the right to work.

Residency card

Once you have legally moved to France you can apply for a carte de séjour vie privée et familiale. 

Once your visa (which normally lasts for one year) is nearing expiration, you can apply for the multi-year private and family life residence permit.

You must meet the following conditions  :

  • You must share a common address with your spouse – except in particular circumstances (the government website mentions death of your spouse, or in cases of domestic violence);
  • Your spouse must be French on the day of the wedding and must have retained French nationality;
  • You cannot be married to more than one person;
  • If your marriage was celebrated abroad, then it must be transcribed in the civil status registers of the French consulate so that it is recognised in France.

In either case, you must apply for this document, no earlier than four months and no later than two months before the expiry date of your existing residence document (visa, VLS-TS or permit).

The usual list of reasons for refusal apply: if you have failed to comply with an obligation to leave the country (OQTF); if you have committed forgery and use of false documents; if you have committed a serious criminal offence; if you have committed acts of violence against elected officers, or public officials.

Additional information is available, in French, here. 

The situation is a little different for people who initially entered France without a long-stay visa. Usually, this applies to those from countries who do not benefit from the 90-day rule and are required to get a short-stay visa to enter France. If this is your situation, then when applying for your carte de séjour you will need to prove;

  • You are not living in a state of polygamy;
  • You are married to a French national with whom you have lived together for 6 months in France.

In this instance the first carte de séjour vie privée et familiale will be issued for a year.

Citizenship

Citizenship by marriage is a ‘right’ in the same way that children born in France to foreign parents have a right to be a citizen through the ‘droit du sol’. Yes, it exists – but there are rules, and it’s not automatic.

Applying for citizenship via marriage involves applying for something known as citizenship par Déclaration. This is, arguably, the more simple of the processes available to adults.

It works to the theory that citizenship via marriage is ‘a right’. That, however, doesn’t mean that citizenship will be handed out automatically – there are a number of conditions that you must fulfil, including having a reasonable level of French, and if you either don’t fit the criteria – or, more accurately, do not provide sufficient proof that you do fit the criteria you can and will be rejected.

READ ALSO Are you entitled to French citizenship if you are married to a French person?

If your spouse divorces you, or dies while you are still going through the process then your application may be no longer valid. Equally, if you get divorced within a year of getting French citizenship it’s also possible (although rare) for your citizenship to be annulled.

Divorce

Yes, we’re spoilsports but people who get married do sometimes get divorced and if you are in France on a visa or residency card that is linked to your marital status then getting divorced can affect your right to stay.

This doesn’t mean you will automatically be kicked out of the country if you split up. In most cases it’s simply a question of applying for a new residency permit in your own right – whether you are working, studying or retired.

If you have minor children in France then you have the right to stay even if you don’t meet the criteria for any other type of residency permit.

You can find full information on how to change your status in case of divorce HERE.

What about children?

Any child born to a French citizen has the right to claim nationality, whether or not they were born in France. So, whether you’re French or not has no bearing on that particular situation.

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