How to get married in Poland and have a Polish wedding
How to marry a Polish citizen
There are two types of Polish marriages, Polish civil marriage and Church marriage. If you have a Polish church wedding this is legal. I will explain the Church wedding, as this is more common in Poland.
As with any official or significant event in your life you need to learn to be patient and collect paper. All church documents must be up to date in the last 6 months. All Polish government documents must be up to date in the last 3 months.
Polish Government
1) You need a letter from you Embassy, saying you can get married or they do not have the information regarding this. This is free.
2) You need your birth certificate translated into Polish. You can order a copy of your birth certificate from the Internet.� Then you have to go to an official Polish language translator and translate this into Polish. This is about 100 Polish zloty. Or better if you have a Polish Aktu Urodzenia then the process goes much easier, and its only 20 Polish zloty. You get his from Urzad Stanu Cywilnego in Polish
3)Then you go to a Polish court with your future wife/husband and partition them to marry a Polish citizen . This will cost about 100 Polish zloty. You will need an official Polish translator if you do not speak the Polish language. This will take about a few months or more in a city and much quicker if you do it in the Polish countryside.
4)At the end of this, you get a piece of paper from the Polish court that says you can marry a Polish citizen. And you take this to the priests. (After you are married by the priest you take another Piece of Paper and bring it to Urzad�d Stanu Cywilnego, this is some Polish office where you simply register your church marriage. Uzad in Polish is a Polish government office.)
The Catholic Church marriage
1) You need to go to classes over four weeks, these classes are kind of interesting and in Polish, so if you are learning or want to learn Polish, here is your chance and the classes are fun. Your there with a bunch of other Polish couples.
Then you have to meet together as a couple twice with a layperson from the church and each individually once. After this process, you will get a piece of paper with 7 stamps. You each need this. I think this only cost about 30 Polish złoty and the counseling is actually solid advice, not this crazy media pop psychology you might get in the west.
2) You need your birth certificate and your baptism certificate, you need your confirmation certificate or a letter from your priest back home that says you were confirmed (This is the only document that does not need to be to update).
3) You make an appointment with the main church office in your town with all your papers. They check it.
5)Your future wife’s priest and your priest will need to announce, in her and your church, that you will be married. These announcements occur on three Sundays.
That is it.You are all set for your Polish wedding.
How long does this take? It depends on you.� I would say 6 months is good but if you wan tot do it in 3 months I think this can be done.
Can you pay anyone to make this go faster? No.
Can I get married in the church without the government paper? Technically yes. But it would not be a legal Polish wedding and I do not know if this done. But in the eyes of the Church your married happily every after.
So what do I need again to get married in Poland?
1) Court decision that says you can marry a Polish person
2)� Birth certificate
3)� Baptismal certificate
4) Church wedding preparation certificate
Write me at MarkBiernat@yahoo.com if you have any questions about how to marry a Polish citizen.
Have a wonderful life. It is a wonderful time in your life.
Tags: catholic, church, citizen, government, how-to, marriage, marry, Poland, Polish, wedding
273 responses to How to get married in Poland
We did it both in Polish and in English. Depending on the priest you choose, you can get it in both as many of the priests speak both Polish and English. We did not translate every word but one reading was in Polish another in English and the vows were in both.
If you are a legal resident of Poland and have lived there going on a year I think yes, why do you need a Polish drivers license?
Hi Mark,
how are you ? thanks for your advice and guess what i am with my beautiful wife now thank you so very much i wish i could have been able to invite you for the party but i dont know it would be feasible enough for you or not . hope we will see each other sometime if you ever come to poland , well i was wondering that after trying a loads of search engines and googling i couldnt find a job which was sufficing my stay in poland so i and my wife is deciding to move to ireland , nevertheless i have a query Mark, after marriage i can go anywhere in the european union and work or it will be some other formalities which will be done .i dont know how because 100 people 100 ways of telling things so i thought its better to ask you for this , so please advice me on this and well if you are in poland please contact me on my email so that we can be in touch .thanking you once again for your great answers and good luck!!!
zack
Hi Mark,Im from asian country im pregnant with my polish boyfriend,and we are planning to getting married,How long we must wait for judge decision if he can marry me or not?If we getting married did im allowed to stay with him in netherlands? because he was working there.
God Bless You
Karol
My visa in netherlands will exfired this coming october 2010,nowwe want to getting married.If we getting married in poland did i can stay with him in netherlands or no after october?
God Bless You
Karol
If you are legal then it will not be long. It could be three to six months. Under the circumstances it might be accelerated.
Most of the time, you can stay in Poland under a fiance visa, however, I do not know if that allows you to stay in NL, it is part of this free zone, so I think you can.
Thanks to replying my message,by this time we received the divorce paper of my BF to his first wife, the problem is it was be written in Polish, and they don’t want to accept here in NL they need it to translate to English, and its really hard to find some professional people here who want to translate it.it is possible if you can we can send it the documents to you by you email if you can give it and we send a money to you by western union to make it, we really need this paper to make a “saleswomen” here in Netherlands as soon as possible, samenwonen here in Netherlands is the same of marriage to make a registration the baby,hope you can make it for me, thank you once again.
God bless you
Gina
I do not get involved in helping anyone with their citizenship beyond giving my personal experiences with it on this website. I think if you are motivated you can find someone professional to help you.
Whenever I see western union and online and I need your help with citizenship and my boyfriend or girlfriend, I think scam. Why are they not helping you?
Hi I’m Karol ,Can you help me to my problem,, We have a daughter of my Polish boyfriend can I stay in Poland even we are not married as his family? after 3 months my visa in europe is expired and we don’t have plan to getting married just we want to be together with my daughter, is it the government of Poland let me to stay, even we are not married but we have a kid.
thanks
Karol
If you child is born to a Polish father I highly recommend you get your daughter Polish citizenship or at least try, if your boyfriend is the father. Without this I can see no legal reason the government of Poland would let you stay. If you had this baby with your boyfriend I would get married. A baby is no light responsibility and needs a father and a mother. This would allow you to stay in Poland, a fiance visa or marriage.
Thanks to replying my mail,the reason why we cannot married together is i was be married in my country in my first husband the problem is thiers no any devorce in my country you can be married only one time ,but Im sure that her father is my folish BF.
I can sure that by taking a DNA test,and we have biethrcertificate of her,the only problem is im married before,that why i wanna know if we can stay in poland together in poland even my visa was exfired after 3 months,poland government let us be stay as his family or not?
thanks
Karol
Hello my name is pawell am polish am living with my girlfriend of two yrs now she is pregnant the problem is she is illegal and has been living here in Manchester for the past eight yrs we want to get married now but don’t know what to do can you advice us as I don’t want her to go back home with our baby.
I wonder what problems a Messianic Jewish person would have marrying a gentile Pole with this situation. I didn’t realize church and state were so connected in Poland. I know Catholics probably ahve strict rules about marrying outsiders, although I am not aware of them all. However, I don’t think I could ever say that I am a Catholic and swear on the altar, anything of this nature.
You do not have to swear this and the church and state are not connected like in a legal sense.. Simply there is a treaty that says religious marriages are recognized by the state, but the reality is the civil marriage is the important thing. For example, before I got married in the church I sign the civil document, some people do it after. Does not matter. But church and state are seperate.
If you marry a catholic, you do not have to convert, rather just state that if the bride wants to raise the children in a catholic way, you will not prevent her. This is a very liberal open thing.
There are many places to get married easy with little documents in the world. You know like Vegas you just need a pasport and like 25 dollars. Once you are married your wife has a right to get a visa based on you. Since she is not legal in the EU it will be hard to get a civil marriage but I would look for ways to get a quick civil marriage legally in or close to the EU. But she could do this after the birth of the child even. Main thing is do not stress too much and you will love being a father. I do.
Hi Mark,
Me and my polish partner are very confused.
I am English and we would like to marry in Poland.
We have been advised by our Polish Priest in order to minimize paper work and logistics we would be better to have a civil ceremony in the U.K and then
a Church blessing in Poland with all the trimmings.
We have contacted our local priest in then u.k who
says different.Can you help? thanks
Either way is fine. I think if you have a couple of months do it all in Poland. The Church and the state have a treaty so the Church wedding and the civil wedding is one, all you need is a marriage license. This should take about 3 months to get. I did it and I am American, so I think as a UK citizen it would even be easier. It is according is you want to do the paperwork.
Hey Mark,
I need your advise about a marriage in Poland. My boyfriend and I are planning to get married because I am now pregnant. The problem is I am now living in one of Asian cities and don’t have any visa to Poland yet. Can you give me some advises to deal with this problem, what type of visa can I obtain to get along with this plan? How about fiancée visa, is it also possible for me to get it instead of C visa type? Could you also tell me how to get the certificate of impediment? Thank you.
Hi that is great you are going to have a baby. I think the fiancee visa is easy to get. At the Polish embassy they can help you with this. Once you are married, even in a simple civil marriage you will get a full visa and one your way to citizenship if you want.
I am English and my partner is Polish. We are trying to get married in Poland but have hit a problem I’ve not seen anyone else having.
I was married before and divorced. The marriage was in a registrar office not church. However the Polish Bishop has rejected our application on the grounds that he has no proof that I was not married in a church at some time in my life. How can this be proved? Has anyone else had this problem?
Thanks
Andy
Easy solution, the fact is you were not married. He may be an old stubborn guy but you have the right to marry in the Church because you were never married in the Church’s eyes.
You need to talk to a priest who knows Vatican law. It is free. In a big city like Krakow they can help you. I think all that is required is a note from your parish back home that says you were not married.
But it might be more complex. That is why you need to talk to a priest that knows Vatican law. Do not be intimidated or become sour, jump through a few hoops now and it will be worth it to get a nice wedding you and your bride can look back on. Shakespeare wrote, ‘the course of true love never did go smooth’.
2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks to
Latin as the official language of the Catholic church | Language learning as an art and science Comment on How to get married in Poland : September 10th, 2007 at 12:06
[...] am getting married in Poland and I am an American citizen. The the Polish courts are very slow and difficult, the Catholic [...]
How to get an EU citizenship | Language learning as an art and science Comment on How to get married in Poland : September 11th, 2007 at 06:18
[...] have old fashion TV based ideas. Marriage does not change your citizenship. It will allow you to get a visa easier to stay in the country [...]
Leave a reply to How to get married in Poland