Does anyone have any experience as a US citizen on getting married in Europe? My fiancee and I are considering getting married overseas, but I am not sure of the legal issues/hastles/conflicts to do so. Any advice is appreciated.

I am a civilian contractor who is getting married next week to a military active soldier. I explored just about every country to get married in and Denmark is the easiest. You have to be careful about foreign marriages because it may not be recognized as legal in the US. Also, if there has been a previous divorce the foreign country may not recoginize it as being legal. I ran into this as Denmark did not understand the concept of "final dissolution" they wanted additional information from the court where I was divorced. Needless to say gathering all this other stuff took three months and a lot of phone calls. I suggest you look at embassy web pages and find the information there about foreigners getting married in their country. Copenhagen has a 14 day period of residence. I had to personally appeal this to the judge who will be marrying me. It took him a month to decide. Most european countries have a legal civil service and then you can do the big wedding thing after that, but you cannot be legally married in a church without the legal ceremony first. All in all I am getting married next week and am glad to do it overseas as there will be no dysfunctional family members present to ruin my special day. Good Luck!!!PS most american embassy's overseas can tell you what the marriage requirements are, the US embassy in Copenhagen was very helpful and they speak English...

My husband and I got married in Scotland last August -- specifically, we were married at Dalhousie Castle outside of Edinburgh. We had around 20 close friends and family there (at the wedding and also for a few days in Edinburgh before the wedding), and it was an absolutely wonderful, romantic, unforgettable experience. <BR><BR>Both of us are US citizens. After doing research, we found out that a marriage in Europe is recognized as legal in the U.S. as long as it is done according to the law of that foreign country (but please do your own research). <BR><BR>We found a book titled "Beyond Vegas: 25 Exotic Wedding and Elopement Destinations Around the World" by Lisa Tabb and Sam Silverstein. After reading it, we fell in love with the idea of Scotland because 1) there are many castles that host weddings and we thought that would be very romantic, and 2) it is one of the easiest countries in Europe to get married (no residency period, not a lot of forms, etc.). <BR><BR>If you are specifically interested in Scotland, email me directly and I can try to find some of the website addresses that I used in my research.

Jennifer - <BR><BR>Frankly, unless you have a specific interest in a particular area, I don't know why you'd necessarily want to do this. "Europe" is an extremely large and varied area, physicially and culturally. What about getting married in Europe appeals to you? Have you been anywhere in Europe before?

Nicole -<BR><BR>Thank you for the name of that book. Your wedding sounds wonderful. We just returned from a trip to Austria and both fell in love with Salzburg and would love to get married there. This will be just family and we love travelling to Europe so it just seems right for us. I appreciate your help. (By the way, I have found the American Embassy websites to be helpful in providing legal information for the process.)

Hi Jennifer,<BR><BR>I got married this past October in Positano, Italy. The most beautiful experience of my life thus far. I actually contracted the services of Sogni Italiani, a company that specializes in weddings in Italy. I could not have imagined doing the planning on my own-the whole language thing in dealing with government officials. Yikes! All in all everything went smoothly. I had to send over several documents that were translated into Italian and then once over there I had to appear before the US Consulate and then a Napoli district official. I would suggest hiring someone if you chose a non-English speaking country and do not speak that language fairly well. However, you may have the time and patience to do all yourself.<BR><BR> By the way, do you have any idea where you would like to get married? What time of year? I chose Italy because we were getting married in October and wanted some warmth and an ocean setting without going to the Caribbean. I could not have made a better choice. Good luck with your decision.<BR><BR>Feel free to email if you have specific questions.<BR><BR>Jessica

There are companies who will help you through the intricacies and legalities of getting married in Scotland and some of the castle renting agencies and hotels will do it for you.<BR><BR>Here's one. I don't know anything about them you understand, just found their web site<BR><BR>http://www.scottish-wedding-consultants.com/intro.htm<BR><BR>The Internet Guide to Scotland Online- a web site I highly rate- has a good section on weddings too.<BR><BR>http://www.scotland-info.co.uk/weddings.htm