The legal requirements for a wedding in Latin America

A legal marriage in Costa Rica is a simple and straightforward process. Blood tests, birth nor civil status certificates are not required, neither is there a minimum stay requirement on Costa Rican soil. A sworn statement attesting your civil status, date and place of birth and parents name covers all requirements.

All weddings performed outside of a Catholic church require the presence of a lawyer, who then files all of the legal documents with the Costa Rican Civil Registry, as well as your Embassy, thus ensuring your marriage is legal and recognized internationally.

Before you come to Costa Rica, our lawyer will send you a questionnaire via email, asking for some general information about yourself and your spouse-to-be (i.e. civil status, occupation, parent’s names, age, birthplace, current address etc.) and the name and passport number of two witnesses, that you fill out and send back with a copy of your passports. (If you do not have witnesses, we can provide them for your). With this information, the lawyer prepares the marriage document and the sworn statements, which must be signed immediately after the ceremony.

Once all the documents have been submitted to the Costa Rican Civil Registry, the lawyer will submit a final certification to your Embassy for Consular Authentication. The authenticated documents are usually sent to you within 90 days from the day of the event (via Fedex or certified mail).

Residence in Mexico is not required, just a passport and tourist permit. Chest X-rays and blood tests must be done locally in Mexico, as the results of the blood tests and the X-ray documentation must be in Spanish and the tests need to be done within a certain time frame of the marriage. As not all Mexican States require the chest X-rays we will advise.

Four witnesses need to be present at the legal ceremony, with valid identification (usually a valid passport is used, but other forms of government-issued identification are valid too). If you do not have witnesses, we can provide them for you.

For your marriage certificate to be valid worldwide, our lawyer will ensure that it is all the steps of legalization take place in Mexico.

Guatemala does not require any minimum time spent in the country, nor chest X-rays and blood tests. A valid passport and certified copy of birth certificates are required. In addition, persons previously married must present evidence of the dissolution of the previous marriage (e.g. a divorce decree or death certificate of the previous spouse). All non-Guatemalan documents presented to the marriage registrar must first be authenticated by a Guatemalan Consul in the United States.

Proof of legal capacity to enter into a marriage contract is required in the form of certification by competent authority that no impediment exists to the marriage. As such a document does not exist in the United States, Guatemalan authorities usually accept an affidavit written by the U.S. citizen stating that they are free to marry and notarized at the American Embassy. This is called "libertad de estado."

An announcement in the official Guatemalan newspaper is required for two weeks before the marriage to check if there is an obstacle for the marriage.

Marriages in Guatemala are almost always performed by local civil officials (Alcalde Municipal) or a Guatemalan lawyer.

Due to new regulations that require residence in Ecuador for at least 75 consecutive days before being entitled to get married, legal marriages in Ecuador are not feasible for foreigners. Thiese regulations came into force on 16 March 2010 with the purspoe of minimising marriages of convenience. It is important to note that relevant regulations in the Galapagos are even more onerous.

This of course does not prevent the celebration of weddings on a non-legal basis, for example after the legal marriage has taken place in your own country.