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Is Getting Married In Thailand Harder Now Than It Was In The Past?
Transcript of the above video:
One thing, I just was sitting around and I happened to notice sitting here the last couple of weeks, I hadn't done a video on it but it is a pretty major development and it has occurred kind of incrementally; it has also occurred while we have gone through all this COVID stuff.
So if I went back to quarter one of 2020 in my mind and I sort of looked forward at major things that have changed especially coming out of the COVID tunnel if you will where we are now sitting, and okay things are back open, things are moving along, what's a big change?
One of the big ones is marriage. Marriage Registration at one time, I remember years ago this could be done, and I am generally taking this from the context of Americans marrying Thais although I did assist with Australians, and British folks, Canadians, lot of English speakers but even Europeans, although Europe depending on the jurisdiction someone was hailing from Europe, that could be kind of a sticky wicket because different European countries have different rules regarding marriage. But generally speaking, the Common Law jurisdictions it was relatively straightforward. I mean these things could be done in a matter of a couple of business days. That is not the case now. In fact, getting married one should probably presume it can take as long as a month to get a marriage registered here in Thailand and this is based on a number of factors. Most notably in the past and again I am taking this purely from the American context, you could get your marriage documentation from the US Embassy processed out pretty darn quickly because they took appointments on a first come first served basis at the American Citizen Services Section of the US Embassy here in Bangkok or even up in Chiang Mai. Now these days it requires an appointment and due to the demand for appointments, you could be waiting a while. It could be a week or two before you actually get an appointment to get the relevant documentation you need to get married in Thailand from the US Embassy, so that's one factor.
Then on top of it, we have actually seen the protocols for getting that documentation legalized; we have seen the time it takes to get that done extended tremendously compared to times past. There was a time that could be done in a day. You could take it out there and if you timed it right, you got in there right at the beginning of the day, you could usually get it out by the end of that day. Now sometimes it might bump over into the next day and then okay you have got to wait till the next day to get your documentation back in order to then make arrangements with the relevant Civil Registrar office here in Thailand to get the marriage actually registered which again, that in and of itself is becoming more and more of a cumbersome endeavor as different Civil Registrar offices have less and less availability with regard to time. There are also new formalities associated with actually registering the marriage itself most notably witnesses can be somewhat problematic so again overall, just the overall process of getting married in Thailand is far more time consuming than it once was.