Filipinos Getting Married in Dubai.

When me and my fiance needed to secure a marriage license from the United Arab Emirates, I searched through google if there were some articles that could help me. And I found some which weren’t very helpful. And so I wanted to share my experience on how I was able to do it. We are getting married on December 23, 2008 at the Philippine Consulate in Dubai.

Here are the things you need to have and things you need to do ( this applies if both of you are Filipino Nationals) :

1. you need an AUTHENTICATED  CENOMAR . Certificate of No Marriage Record also known as Singleness Certificate.

A Certificate of No Marriage Record(CENOMAR) is simply what its name implies. It is a certification issued by the National Statistics Office  (NSO) stating that a person has not contracted marriage.

To secure a CENOMAR, you need the following information:

1. Complete name of the person to be certified
2. Complete name of the father
3. Complete maiden name of the mother
4. Date of birth
5. Place of birth
6. Complete name and address of the requesting party
7. Number or copies needed
8. Purpose for the certification

You can request this online! Just go to this site: https://www.ecensus.com.ph/Secure/frmIndex.asp . you can apply for it yourself, just ask anybody from the Philippines to pay for you since UAE cards cannot be used as a mode of payment. What I did is i asked my sister to pay in an Equitable PCI Bank, and then had the documents delivered in our home address in Manila.

When they receive the CENOMAR, they will have to go to DFA and have it authenticated or what they call red ribboned in Department of FOreign Affairs.

When you have the CENOMAR authenticated in DFA, you can now have it parceled to you in Dubai.

2. you will also need your Birth Certificates ( to verify your age)

> If you are 25 years old below, you will need a Parental Consent Form/ Letter. and both of your parents’ passport and visa copy as well.

3. A fully accomplished Application For Marriage License Forms which you can get from the Philippine Embassy in Dubai or the Philippine Consulate in Dubai.  Both of you need to fill out  a separate form.

4. An Announcement For MArriage Form. This is where you will need both of your photographs. You will need to attach the photos to the form and fill out both of your personal information. This form will be displayed at the Marriage Bans Section of the Embassy/ Consulate for 2- 3 weeks.

5. A Joint Affidavit of Witnesses to a Marriage Form. This form has to be signed by two of your witnesses on the day of the marriage.

6. Copy of you Witnesses’ (2 witnesses) Passport and Visa Page.

7. Bring extra copies of photographs.

Procedure:

Here’s what I did.

We went to the Philippine Consulate in Al Gusais Dubai via Business Bay. Note that they have lunch breaks. I aarived exactly during their lunch break so we had to wait for an hour till they are back from break.

>Queue to the area which says Notary. It is the one nearest to the cashier.
>They will check all your documents and then they will tell you how much you have to pay.
>Then you go to the next queue to the cashier and you pay the amount. I payed 440 dirhams.

And then you’re done.

They will set a date for you or they will give you dates available and you choose.

They conduct marriages on Thursdays, except if it falls on a public holiday, they also follow some of the Philippine’s legal holiday.

I noticed that there are some carlifts there, no cabs are available so bring a car to get there.