Did I read that right?!? Catholic wedding in Mexico may be legalized in US?

superez · 12-12-2007, 08:53 PM

Hi brides to be!

I am considering a Catholic wedding in Playa and I happened to come across Ajua Wedding's website. I read the following in their civil ceremony section...here it is verbatim:

"For brides and grooms who are both foreigners and are having an official Catholic wedding, we ask you to check with your local parish priest to determine if you need both an official Catholic Wedding and Mexican Civil Wedding to be legally married in your country."

I'm interpreting this as: our local parish priest may make the decision to legally marry us here in US based on this official Catholic ceremony in Mexico. What do you think? Does anyone have any experience with this

?? This would be awesome if it's true!

Susan :)

amyh · 12-12-2007, 09:10 PM

I'm not sure, however the Catholic Church in Mexico requires you to provide a legal marriage certificate or proof that there will be a legal marriage in conjunction with the Catholic ceremony.

beachbride08 · 12-13-2007, 11:51 AM

Maybe other countries other than the US consider it legal. I thought for US you need to do the legal ceremony in Mexico for it to be legal in US. We are doing a civil ceremony here before we go to Mexico and just having the "illegal" blessing ceremony in Mexico.

amyh · 12-13-2007, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beachbride08

Maybe other countries other than the US consider it legal. I thought for US you need to do the legal ceremony in Mexico for it to be legal in US. We are doing a civil ceremony here before we go to Mexico and just having the "illegal" blessing ceremony in Mexico.

we are also having a legal ceremony here in the US then providing a copy of our marriage license for the Church in Mexico.

Tlseege · 12-13-2007, 03:05 PM

From what I read it says you need to have BOTH a civil wedding and a catholic wedding in order for it to be legal. In other words the civil part takes care of the legal and the Catholic takes care of the religion that most people are looking for.

superez · 12-13-2007, 05:54 PM

That's what I thought, but I was being hopeful that our local parish priest could sign our California marriage license, thus making it legal here in the US, once he saw that we got married through the Church in Mexico. I was being too optimistic - haha.

Thanks for all your comments!!

dallas_texas09 · 01-08-2008, 07:57 AM

Here's my understanding on this. I thought that for the Mexican government to view a marriage legal it must be done in front of a Judge. This means that if you have a wedding officiated by a Judge then it is fine. However, for a Catholic wedding, it is officiated by a priest, therefore the marriage is not technically legal. From the church's perspective you are married but this is not accepted by everyone else in the world. When we got married in Playa del Carmen, the priest did not give us a marriage license after our ceremony. He gave us a marriage certificate -- similar to what you get when you get Baptized or when you have your Holy Communion or Confirmation. However, the marriage certificate provided by the Church is not a legal piece of document stating that we are married. It is a document ONLY accepted by the Church.

So, with that said, it was my understanding that if you wish to have a Catholic ceremony in Mexico, you must also do a civil ceremony (one performed by a Judge). You can do this before or after your Catholic wedding ceremony and can be done in the U.S. or in Mexico. This is when you get your actual marriage license. In my case, we had our civil ceremony in the U.S. prior to going to Mexico.

mitchell.johanna · 02-13-2008, 08:16 PM

dallas_texas09-

Thank you so much for your explanation!!! I think that was exactly what I was looking for. I think that my FI and I will have a civil wedding here in the US and try to do our Catholic wedding in Mexico.

Anyone have any ideas on how difficult or easy it is to find/book a Church in Riviera Maya...AND find an English-speaking priest?

This would honestly be my ideal situation... would please the Catholic parents and relieve the stress of doing all the "legal" stuff in Mexico.

superez · 02-14-2008, 09:33 AM

Hi Johanna,

We are getting married in the cutest catholic chapel in Playa del Carmen where Dallas_Texas (Catherine) got married too. There are 2 english speaking priests in the area and we are having one of them conduct our ceremony, Father Jorge Castaneda. There are a few wedding planners in the area who can help you plan this and manuever the catholic paperwork process. Catherine had a wonderful experience with Ajua Weddings and I am having Caribbean Blue Weddings coordinate mine, which so far has been great. WC Yazmin de la Mora can also coordinate Catholic weddings.

As far as the legal marriage, I just found out that our priest here in the US will marry us legally when we get back!! So we don't even have to go to the county office after all. So if you decide to get married through the church it won't hurt to ask your priest if he'll do this.

Good luck! How exciting!
Susan

Adamsgrrl · 02-14-2008, 10:16 AM

We got married at the main Church in Playa. BUT from what we understood it wasn't legal.. so this is the first time I'm hearing this. Our legal marriage took place in Vegas.

Please keep us posted I would be curious to see if this is really true.