Consular services

Marriage

LEGAL REQUIREMENTS FOR MARRIAGE IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
The following documents must be legalised:

1) Complete Original Full Birth Certificate or an Official Extract including parents´ names; ; and
2) According to his/her situation:
a) If never married: A Statutory Declaration, stamped by a Notary or     Solicitor, declaring single marital status and eligibility to marry.
b) If divorced: Decree Absolute and a Statutory Declaration, stamped by a     Notary or Solicitor, declaring marital status and eligibility to marry.
c) If widowed: Spouse’s Death Certificate, previous Marriage Certificate and     a Statutory Declaration, stamped by a Notary or Solicitor, declaring     marital status and eligibility to marry.
3) If a name has been changed by Deed Poll or if the person has been    adopted, proof of this must be presented.
4) If the person is under 18 years old, parental consent is required in the     form of an Affidavit stamped by a Notary or Solicitor.

NOTES:
• Statutory Declarations are to be declared per person (i.e. joint declarations   are not accepted) and must include passport numbers, address and line of   employment. A model Statutory Declaration can be downloaded from here.
• Statutory Declarations are valid for a period of three months from the date   of issue.
• Divorced women cannot get married again until 10 months after the    divorce is finalized, unless her new husband is the same man she   divorced.

Procedure for legalisations:
Each original document (Document in English) must be legalised by both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Consular Section of the Embassy of the Dominican Republic in the UK prior to departure.
1) Documents must first be sent to the Legalization Office at the Foreign and    Commonwealth Office. Please contact them for further information about    the procedure.
2) Documents must then be sent to the Consular Section of the Embassy.

Legalisations at the Embassy:
Documents should be posted to the address below along with a pre-paid Recorded/Special delivery envelope. We strongly recommend you send your documents to both offices by Recorded/Special delivery as the Embassy cannot be held liable for any document lost in the post. We regret we will be unable to return documents without an envelope with the appropriate postage. The Embassy of the Dominican Republic cannot be held liable for the loss or damage of any document entrusted to the postal service.

• Documents will take a minimum of seven working days to be processed.

The fee for legalisations at the Embassy is £60 per document. All payment must be made by Postal Order or Banker's Draft; payable to the Embassy of the Dominican Republic. WE DO NOT ACCEPT PERSONAL CHEQUES.

Priority service
In cases of emergency, documents may be processed within four working days. They will be posted Special Delivery, as long as such an envelope is provided. There is a fee of £10 for this service.

This service is not available for translations, which will be processed in a minimum of 7 working days.

Translations (fees are separate from Legalisations):
All documents must be translated into Spanish and certified as true copies of the original by the Embassy. The fee for translations is £85 per document (which includes the translation itself and the certification but NOT the legalisations of the original English document). If you already have had translations made by a registered commercial translator, the fee for their certification as true copies is £60. Please note that if you use a commercial translator, the Spanish documents will still need to be certified by the Embassy.

When submitting handwritten documents, please make sure they are clearly legible or include a note clarifying the difficult to read sections.

Please note that the fee for translations is separate from the cost of legalising original documents for marriage. Translations will be processed in a minimum of 7 working days.

We strongly recommend that once you get married in the Dominican Republic, you make a record of your marriage at your local Registry Office, for which you will need to translate your Marriage Certificate into English. Please refer to the “Legalisations and Translations” section of this website for information on how to do this.

The Legalization Office Foreign and Commonwealth Office Old Admiralty Building Whitehall London, SW1A 2LG Tel: 020 7008-1111 Fax: 020 7008-1010 www.fco.gov.uk/legalisation

You can now pay for the legalisation of documents online.

Pay for your documents now!

Consular Section Embassy of the Dominican Republic 139, Inverness Terrace Bayswater London W2 6JF Tel: 09065 508 945 Fax: 020 7 727 3693 E-mail: info@dominicanembassy.org.uk