Getting Married in Denmark from Germany: What Happens Back Home

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Why couples living in Germany marry in Denmark

A wedding at a German registry office (Standesamt) starts with a file. You need birth certificates and proof of where you live. A partner who marries under foreign law also needs a certificate of no impediment from their home country — a document that says they are free to marry. If that country doesn’t issue one, the partner needs an exemption from the Higher Regional Court instead.¹ On top come translations by translators sworn in Germany, plus apostilles or legalizations. For international couples, this file is usually the hardest part.

Denmark checks less and decides faster. As a rule, it doesn’t ask for a certificate of no impediment. Each of you signs a declaration that you are unmarried, and a false declaration is a crime. The agency asks for proof only if it has doubts.² It accepts documents in English or German. A complete application is usually decided within five working days. Several town halls hold the ceremony in English or German.

Demand has grown fast. The Agency of Family Law received 23,404 applications in 2024, 14% more than a year earlier, according to the Danish Chamber of Commerce. Copenhagen alone held 4,378 regular town hall weddings in 2024. On top came 2,620 short-notice ceremonies under a scheme the city has since stopped.³

Check first: does a Danish wedding suit your situation?

Your Danish marriage counts in Germany if each of you was free to marry under the law of your home country — the country whose citizen you are.⁴ Whether Denmark is the right place depends mostly on one thing: the residence status of a partner from outside the EU.

Why the Schengen visa is the problem. A spouse permit normally requires that the partner came to Germany on the right visa: the national visa for family reunion. A Schengen visa for a short visit is not that visa.⁵ There is one way around it. If the right to the permit only arose after you entered Germany, you can apply inside Germany.⁶ A wedding in Denmark doesn’t qualify, as Germany’s Federal Administrative Court ruled in 2011.⁷

The case: a Russian woman entered on a Schengen visa. She married a German on the Danish island of Bornholm and came back the same day. The court said the right to the permit starts with the wedding, and what counts is the last entry into Germany. She had married before that entry, so she had to apply for the visa from abroad. Had the couple married in Germany during her legal stay, she could have applied in Germany, the court noted.⁷

Two more points. Writing “visit” on a Schengen visa application when you plan to marry and stay counts as false information, and it rules out applying from inside Germany. The same court had ruled so in 2010.⁸ And citizens of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Israel are the exception: they can apply in Germany within 90 days of entry.⁹ The details and the requirements for the permit: married abroad: what to do in Germany and spouse visa for Germany.

Step 1: Apply to the Agency of Family Law

If you live in Germany, you apply to the Agency of Family Law (Familieretshuset), not to a town hall.¹⁰ The application is online and in English. Each of you fills in your own part. Watch the clock: if the second part is still missing 14 days after the first was started, the case is closed and the fee is lost.¹¹ An agency or a family member can apply for you. They need a power of attorney signed by both of you.¹²

Conditions: both of you must be at least 18. Neither of you may be married, and any earlier marriage must have legally ended. You must not be closely related.² On the wedding day, each of you must be in Denmark legally.¹⁰ A residence permit from another Schengen country counts as proof — a German one, for example. So do a Schengen visa and visa-free entry.¹³

Documents (as listed by the agency):

• photos of every page of each passport, in color, including the cover and empty pages — or both sides of an EU identity card;
• proof that you are in Denmark legally: the German residence permit or, if you don’t have one, the visa sticker or entry evidence (see below);
• a certificate of joint residence if you live together outside Denmark;
• birth certificates of any children you have together;
• if you were married before: the divorce decree, death certificate or annulment.

Documents in another language must come as the original plus a translation into Danish, English or German by an authorized translator. Documents from Germany and the rest of continental Europe usually need no apostille. The agency lists the exceptions, among them Albania, Belarus, Georgia, Kosovo, Russia and Ukraine.¹⁴ A non-EU passport must be valid for at least three months beyond your stay.¹³

New since 10 April 2026: with the EU Entry/Exit System (EES), passports are no longer stamped. So partners without a Schengen residence permit need other proof of their legal stay: printouts of the data page and the result page of the EES calculator, plus plane tickets or boarding passes. A visa holder also adds the visa sticker. A German residence permit is still enough on its own.¹⁵

Fee: DKK 2,100 per application in 2026, the same as in 2025.¹⁶ You pay by card or mobile wallet when you submit the application. You don’t get the money back if the application is refused or you don’t marry. If you have a Danish MitID, you must log in with it; everyone else creates a profile with an email address.¹²

Marriages of convenience: Danish law bans marriages entered mainly to gain a right of residence.¹⁰ The agency may ask how long you have known each other and where you met. It may want unedited photos of the two of you or invite you to an interview.¹⁷ Expect this if you met only recently.

Step 2: Processing time and how long the approval lasts

The agency says a complete application is usually decided within 5 working days. If it has to ask for more information, it takes longer: in October 2026, the agency was working on such cases from August 2026.¹¹ So send a complete file the first time.

The approval (Certificate of Marital Status) is valid for 4 months from the day it is issued.¹⁰ If a passport, visa or permit runs out earlier, the approval ends with it. Example: a passport that is valid for only five more months gives you two months to marry. After that, you apply and pay again.¹²

Step 3: Book a town hall

With the approval you get a link to the booking system of the town you chose. In Tønder, that link is the only way to book — not email, not phone. The ceremony is in Danish by law, but many towns offer English or German.¹⁸ Two witnesses must be present, and many town halls provide them.¹⁰

The ceremony is free. Danish rules say a wedding costs the couple nothing. Extra costs come only if you ask for a ceremony outside the usual rooms. An interpreter is at your expense if neither of you lives in Denmark.¹⁸ Copenhagen had charged fees anyway. In August 2025, the city’s own legal review found no basis for them, and Copenhagen decided to refund about DKK 23 million to around 12,000 couples.³

Bornholm has stopped marrying foreign couples, and Frederiksberg has cut back, Danish media reported in August 2026. The agency’s advice: check which towns have free dates before you name one in your application. Requests to switch towns later have piled up.

The wedding day and the marriage certificate

Right after the ceremony you get two marriage certificates.¹⁸ Copenhagen, Tønder and Aabenraa issue them in five languages — Danish, English, German, French and Spanish. So German authorities can read them without a translation. A replacement is free; in Copenhagen it takes three to four weeks.

For use in Germany, a Danish marriage certificate needs no apostille. Under EU rules, civil status documents from one EU country are accepted as genuine in another without one.¹⁹ If you need the certificate outside the EU — in a partner’s home country, for example — the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs adds an apostille for DKK 250 per document.²⁰

Agency or do it yourself?

If both of you hold an EU passport or a German residence permit, you can usually apply on your own. The form is in English, the document list is short, and you book through the link in the approval. Agencies earn their fee when the file is harder: documents from countries that need an apostille, a partner on a visa, or tight dates. They also look for free town hall slots.

Prices on the agencies’ own websites, as of October 2026. Only the larger packages include the agency fee of DKK 2,100, which the agencies convert at €282:

• Document check and application only: €290 (Easy Weddings Denmark, “Essential”) and €295 (Getting Married in Denmark, “Essential”), fee not included.
• Packages that include the agency fee: €690 (Easy Weddings Denmark, “Complete”), €790 (Wedding Planner Denmark, “Full Service”), €875 (Getting Married in Denmark, “Complete”).
• Larger packages with priority dates, hotel or a private registrar: €1,070 to €2,970; island weddings on Ærø from about €2,200.

Back in Germany: what changes

Your Danish marriage counts in Germany without any recognition procedure.⁴ But German records don’t update themselves. After a German wedding, the registry office informs the authorities for you. After a Danish one, nobody does.

1. Registration office (Bürgeramt): show the marriage certificate so your marital status is updated. The tax office gets it from there.
2. Tax class: the automatic switch to class IV doesn’t happen after a wedding abroad, so send the certificate to your tax office (Finanzamt). Classes III/V or IV with factor need an application by both of you, by 30 November for the current year.²¹ Compare the classes with the income tax calculator.
3. Residence permit: a non-EU partner applies at the immigration office or, after a Schengen visit, at the German embassy (see the table above).
4. Health insurance: a partner earning no more than €565 a month can join the other’s public health insurance free of charge — family health insurance.
5. Surname: a shared married name only applies in German documents once you declare it at a German registry office. Since May 2025, a double name of both surnames is possible.²²
6. German record (optional): if one of you is German, the marriage can be entered in the German marriage register. Fees range from €40 in Cologne to €575 in Hamburg.
7. Money: a joint bank account and one liability insurance policy for both of you.

Every step, with fees and documents: married abroad: is your marriage valid in Germany?

Denmark or a German registry office?

Part of getting married in Germany. Marrying elsewhere: married in Las Vegas · married abroad. Next: after-the-wedding checklist.

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