If you are planning for your civil wedding here in the Philippines, things will come to you smoothly if you know someone in the government, IMO. Sad to say, but I have personally proven that during this journey. There are more and more officials that were taking advantage than those who will support you to do things on your own so that you will get to achieve things efficiently.

Since we already have decided on the event date, we already have a direction on how to manage our short timeline. So of course, the first on our list is to acquire a marriage license.

What do we need in order to acquire a marriage license?

Whether or you are going to be married in through church or through civil rites, you should be providing below requirements.

(note that these requirements are only for applicants 25 years old and above. parental consent and an additional seminar is required for younger couples who
wants to tie the knot. So.. it pays to wait, guys hehehe.)

• NSO Certified Birth Certificate – There are many references which says that LCR copy of birth certificate is already valid if you are applying in the municipality where you are born, but the best way to process any paper in the country would be an NSO certified birth certificate. You may request it via the NSO serbilis centers, or request and pay for it online. After verification, the document will be delivered to you after 3-5 working days. The document’s fee is P140.
• Barangay Clearance of the Bride and Groom. You have to get this from the barangay hall of your current residence. The barangay clearance has to state that its purposely requested for marriage. This document has a fee. The price is depending on where you’re residing. In my case, my Brgy Clearance costs P50, and Jack’s Brgy clearance costs P200. Haha. For you to get to have your clearance, you must present to them a valid ID with picture and current address, showing that you are currently resided in the address you are declaring. If no ID is available, you must show them a valid proof of billing addressed to the address you declared and the billing statement should not be older than 3 months. Otherwise, do the talking. You know the drill.
• CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage) – You may request this document from the NSO Serbilis Centers or through NSO Online portal. The CENOMAR will be delivered to you after maximum of 5 working days or less processing. In our case, the documents were delivered to me after 3 working days. Each CENOMAR costs P195.
• Photocopy of above documents – Secure photocopies of the above documents to avoid the hassle and the photocopy overpricing, if you know what I mean. Perhaps you need to budget at least P20-P25.
• Application For Marriage License (Form 90) – You have to fill up 4 copies, signed by both parties. This is like P50. Then consider the filing fee of P100 and the license fee of P100, So for this just prepare P250.
• Family Planning Seminar – This seminar is conducted by the city government’s health department. This is about being more responsible on making babies. It has to come with a fee of P150 for the attendance certificate I think. We did not attend to this and I will tell you about that later.

After submission of your certificate of attendance to the civil registry counter, all you have to do is wait for at least 10 business days to claim your most awaited
marriage license. Do also keep in mind that the processing varies per municipality. It’s still best to ask your local civil registry office to secure accurate information.

So, to sum it up.. you will need to prepare at least P1495.00, or peg it at P1500.00 for your documentary processing fees.

That’s if you do it the ideal, clean, righteous, and truthful way. That’s how we want our processing to become. CLEAN.

Then life happened. Philippines happened. Government happened.

So now if in case you’re wondering, What happened to our reality? Let me post that on a different entry.