STEP FIVE: Filipino-French Wedding Procedure in the Philippines

Now The Philippine Process

After we received the Certificate of Legal Capacity we headed to Cebu right away to start the Philippine side of the wedding process.

First we went to the city registrar supposedly for the pre-marriage counselling/seminar only to find out that we had to register first.  We got scared because the woman told us that the seminars in the next few weeks are already fully booked but thankfully she was considerate enough to insert us on the nearest date since my fiancé is not a Filipino citizen and might need to travel back to France soon.

PMC or Pre-Marriage Counsellings are only done every Wednesdays and Fridays so we had to wait for the next available schedule which was a Wednesday.  We had to pay ₱100.00 for the registration and we had to bring a valid ID for me and a passport for my fiancé.

The seminar only lasted for four hours and it's done in a mix of the Cebuano-English languages so I had to translate a few parts to my fiancé.  Some topics were pretty interesting but thankfully it was not so long.

After we did the seminar we had to wait another ten days for the publication of banns at the city registrar.  After the ten day wait time we came back to get our marriage license and our marriage certificate which the solemnizing officer will require on the day of the wedding and we had to pay ₱1,050.00 for that.

We had chosen to let the mayor of Cebu City, Honorable Mike Rama solemnize our wedding because we were told that if we ask a judge to do it we will have to pay an amount between ₱10,000.00 to ₱20,000.00 which we'd rather spend for the reception, it's just ridiculous and if the couple are both Filipinos they will only have to pay ₱300.00.  See?  It's just ridiculous!!  And besides, the Cebu City mayor's office is incomparably nicer (more presentable) than most offices of a judge, which is another very good point to consider.

But it's not that simple and easy to let the mayor do your wedding since he's a pretty busy man.  We contacted and went to the mayors office weeks before our chosen date to make sure he can include it in his schedule and we kept on calling his office to check and make sure that his schedule hasn't changed with any kind of out-of-town/country emergencies.  

When we had all the papers ready we went to the mayor's office the following day for the wedding.  It was very quick and Mayor Rama never failed to make some jokes and sing a few lines from his favorite songs....it was not the usual boring ceremony :) and we had a simple yet perfect wedding!!!

With Mayor Rama