Getting married under Thai law involves a pretty straightforward procedure. This holds true for certain foreigners whose embassies follow a rather clear cut procedure in issuing the affirmation or affidavit of freedom to marry, a major requirement to be able to register your marriage in Thailand. Each embassy then has sets of requirements before they issue this document for their citizen. Some require passport and divorce certificate only while others demand a complete dossier to be obtained from the applicant’s home country beforehand. The Chinese embassy is among those embassies who implement a rather tight procedure for the issuance of the affirmation of freedom to marry.

To begin with only Chinese nationals who are settled in Thailand can get married in the Kingdom. By ‘settled’ means the Chinese person is holding any of the non-immigrant visas either because he is working, conducting business, studying or retiring in Thailand. Tourist visa holders are not allowed to get married as the Chinese embassy will not issue the affirmation of freedom to marry. Apart from servicing Chinese citizens, they also service citizens of Hong Kong and Macau, China’s special administrative regions.

If the person satisfies the above immigration status, he may proceed to collect the documents required for the notarization of the unmarried statement or affirmation of freedom to marry. The Chinese embassy website lists the following steps in procuring a notarized copy of unmarried statement.

1. Fill in one copy of “application form for notarization and accreditation” in detail;

2. Submit the valid original passport and one copy of the data page and the final visa page of the passport;

3. Provide the original notarization of unmarried statement (including cases in which the applicants are not married again after divorce or death of the spouse) and one of its copies which should be attested by Chinese ministry of foreign affairs or the foreign affairs office of the province, city and the Thai embassy in china;

4. Provide an unmarried statement (or unmarried statement after divorce or death of the spouse) in English and in duplicate;

5. Provide the one copy of id or passport of two witnesses in Thailand. The witnesses are required to write and sign a guarantee in the witness of the consular officials. The names of the witnesses should be consistent with those on the English statement and application form;

6. Provide one photocopy of two Chinese witnesses’ id or passport and the witnesses should write and sign a signature in the witness of the consular officials;

7. Provide the id of the boyfriend or girlfriend and its copy;

8. The applicant must come to the embassy personally and sign his/her name in the English statement.

Once you obtained the notarized unmarried statement from the Chinese embassy, you can then proceed with the translation and then legalization of the statement at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The legalization process currently takes 3 days as express legalization has since been scrapped by the Thai government. You therefore expect to be able to get married after 4-5 business days from the time you obtained your unmarried statement from your embassy in Thailand.

During the marriage registration of which you need at least two witnesses, the registrar will issue a marriage certificates in Thai. These you need to bring to a translator so that it will be translated into English. You also would need to send the certificates and its translations to the MFA for legalization. This way, it will be recognized as a valid document in your home country or wherever you may need to use it outside of Thailand.

The success of your marriage registration in Thailand starts with liaising with your embassy to ask them for the requirements in obtaining the document for the marriage as required by Thai law. If you have no time, consult with Thai marriage experts to do this for you. It would be a waste of time and money if you come to Thailand only to discover that you can’t actually get married here owing to some missing documents or other marriage requisites.