WINE & ACCESSORIES

French Legal Requirements For A Wedding In France

The legal requirements for a civil wedding in France is a mine-field.  In France one of the bridal couple needs to be resident for a period of 40 days in the commune where you want to get married before you can have a legal civil wedding.  Most foreign couples overcome this burden by having a civil wedding in a registrar's office in their home country and then coming to France with those civil wedding documents and then have the fairytale religious or humanist wedding of their dreams. This way they can have any officiant that they want and their guests do not need to know of their civil ceremony in their home town. Most of the time, the bride and groom (and the officiant) are the only people who know that the ceremony is a vow renewal and not the real deal. This way, you can still have your dream wedding in romantic France, but you can also avoid the residency requirements and the extensive amount of paperwork, rules, and regulations. ~}

In some cases, such as a couple living in France to attend school, or if you or your partner is a resident of France, and you wish to obtain a marriage license, here are a few of the requirements for a marriage in France:

• All marriages in France must be performed by a French civil authority (an officier de l'état civil) before any religious ceremony takes place.
• A religious ceremony may be performed after the civil ceremony. The minister, priest or rabbi performing the religious ceremony will require the certificate of civil marriage (certificat de célébration civile) as proof that the civil ceremony has taken place.

Residence requirement and place of marriage:

• At least one of the parties must have resided in France for forty (40) days prior to the marriage.
• The civil ceremony will take place in the town of residence.
  Publications of banns:
• French law requires the posting of marriage banns at the appropriate city hall no less than ten days before the marriage.
• The first publication of the banns can be made only after thirty days of residence in France.

Marrying couples in France are required to have a civil ceremony at City Hall. This generally occurs the morning of the wedding day and is very short. A longer religious ceremony, usually in a church even if the bride and groom do not regularly attend, follows the civil ceremony. All guests are invited to the church ceremony, but unless you are immediate family or an extremely close friend, don't expect an invitation to the civil ceremony.

The city hall ceremony is required in France as the church and state are strictly separated.  French wedding vows at these ceremonies have been set in stone by the government since Napoleon times.  A typical French wedding often lasts all day with the ceremonies, cocktails, four and five course meals, late night snacks and into the next with a day-after breakfast, a Sunday brunch or even continue on until Sunday lunch.

Although nearly all couples in France still choose to marry in church, the religious service has no legal significance and, in order to qualify for a church wedding, the couple must show that they are legally married under a civil arrangement. If the couple are resident in a country other than France then the civil ceremony may take place there, but the marriage certificate, translated into French, should be delivered to the authorities before the church service.

For more information please refer to your home country's embassy website.  Requirements change all the time so it is imperative to use a wedding planner to check all your french wedding documents.  All of your english documents will need to be translated. 

. In old tradition, village children stretched white ribbons across the path of the procession which had to be cut. This was symbolic of obstacles which the couple would have to overcome in their future married life together.

For the ceremony, the bride and groom are traditionally seated on red velvet chairs and covered by a silk canopy. After they leave the church, the congregation shower them with rice or sometimes wheat. It is also traditional for the couple to leave under an arch made of flowers or to walk over laurel leaves which have been scattered outside the church. Flowers are said to ward off evil spirits with their sweet perfume, while orange blossoms specifically represent fertility.

  Some times, these events include caricature artists who create and give guests free caricatures, gypsy dancers, magicians, children’s entertainment with babysitters, clowns, fairies and even videos and of course the dance entertainment may be provided by DJs, live orchestras or jazz musicians, just to name a few.

~}Finally, the bride and groom can choose to have a traditional wedding cake or a pièce montée, which is a cream puff pastry that takes the form of a pyramid, basket, horn of plenty or dishes.    Tradition goes that the bride is to cut the first piece.  She can be assisted by her groom if she chooses.  The story goes that if this tradition was not kept, the bride would not be able to have children.  Also, it is supposedly bad luck if the figurines fall down.

The wedding night of the couple was traditionally disturbed by pranksters clattering pots and pans, blowing whistles or ringing bells. Today this is replaced by guests travelling to the wedding reception performing several laps of the local streets blowing their car horns and shouting loudly from car windows, and is perhaps the most unusual and 'colourful' feature separating the French wedding from traditions in other parts of the world.

A wedding in france is a fantastic romantic celebration.