“Ah, but are you really going to get married?” Carlos, a 37-year-old from Barcelona, still remembers the surprise of the Aerø City Council official the day before her wedding in Denmark. Although in Spain -and in a large part of European countries- we only identify this Scandinavian territory with the sculpture of the Little Mermaid and the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark is also famous for its open sandwiches -smorrebrød-, a devilish language that is mocked their Swedish and Norwegian neighbors and, of course, their weddings. With and without love.
With 120,000 weddings celebrated per year, 13,000 were foreign couples in 2015, such as Carlos and Jonida, Spanish and Albanian, respectively. Both had lived in Germany for several years and it would never have crossed their minds to say ‘I do’ on an island of 6,000 inhabitants in the southeast of Denmark. And yet, this emerged as the ideal option for a couple who, in addition to love, had a backpack full of obstacles to get married in Aachen (Aachen), the German city where they still live.
“It’s not that they ask for more papers than a German, but to get all the things they ask for, it’s more complicated if you’re a foreigner,” explains this engineer who extended his German Erasmus year indefinitely. It is the politically correct argument. Actually, the real problems in being able to get married legally in Germany came when the municipal authorities realized that Jonida was Albanian, and they set out to verify that it was a real couple and not for convenience. This involved a process lasting between a year and a year and a half, in which officials from Aachen could show up by surprise at the house where Carlos and Jonida have lived since 2010 to verify that they were really together “and that she was carrying out the homework”. “That bothered us the most,” Carlos confesses, recalling those unsuccessful visits to the town hall throughout 2015. And that was the day they both decided to bang their fists on the table and investigate other ways of becoming husband and wife.
Just send an email to any Danish town hall requesting an appointment to get married and entering a fee of 70 euros
The lengthy paperwork surrounding marriage proceedings is not exclusively a German competence. In the Madrid City Council, without going any further, it takes eight months to celebrate a civil wedding in any district: four months just to obtain the appointment for the delivery of the required documentation. In the case of members of the couple of foreign origin, this is more complicated, since the documentation must be issued in the town of origin, which can translate into weeks or months of waiting, depending on the speed and circumstances in which to work each record. In Denmark, however, time and documentation are reduced to a minimum: it is possible to get married in just two days by providing only your passport and birth certificate.
“We were in the middle of November and we decided that we would get married before the end of 2015,” says Carlos. Just send an email to any Danish town hall requesting an appointment to get married, providing the aforementioned certificate and entering a fee of 70 euros in advance. The consistory then confirms to the applicants the date on which they will have the room and the official available, although without guaranteeing a specific waiting time. It can be a week, a month or three. It is at this point that the business of specialized agencies flourishes.
Wedding specialists
“We don’t like that gender, origin or borders are impediments to love.” It is the first declaration of intent that we read on the web, whose founder served as deputy mayor on the island of Fanø for a few years and decided to leave politics and stay with the part he liked best about the job: sealing civil unions. The agency, located in the largest municipality on the island to the west of the peninsula -does not reach 2,700 inhabitants-, offers couples the management of their documentation and the closing of a date to their liking to get married for a basic price of 495 euro. There, the ‘specialty’ is the ceremony on the beach, whose price amounts to 995 euros. Wedding Island boasts a privileged relationship with the local authorities, since it works on the island of Fanø itself, and guarantees the bride and groom that, for this reason, “they will not be alone in Denmark”.
Samantha takes less than 24 hours to offer us two options: get married in a month in Copenhagen for 495 euros or in a week on the island of Aerø for 795 euros
It is not the only company that lives on Danish speed weddings. A first search leads us ipso facto to , the most popular online agency. Immediately, we get a chat with a friendly employee who offers us assistance and answers all our questions. We state our preference for a wedding in Denmark as quickly as possible and, after a few basic questions, in less than an hour he puts us in contact with Samantha Hicks, who becomes our adviser for the wedding.
The contact is carried out through the mail and Samantha takes less than 24 hours to offer us two options according to our time requirements: get married in a month at the Copenhagen City Hall for 495 euros or in a week on the island of Aerø for 795 euros . “The 450 euros we had to pay to the agency made me feel bad, but we opted for this option so that they would guarantee us the earliest date,” says Carlos, who ended up hiring the Getting Married in Denmark service. After all, the days were running on the calendar and it was already the middle of November. The money was well spent: he and Jonida were given an appointment to become husband and wife at Aerø City Hall within seven days.
Carlos and Jonida, on the ferry after getting married in Aerø. Image: Carlos.
wedding on a danish island
But let’s go back to where we left off. Seven days later, and after a race against time by car from Aachen to pick up Carlos’s brother in Hamburg and take a ferry to Aerø, the couple arrive at the town hall of the island’s main municipality, Aerøskøbing, where an official distributes appointments for the ceremonies. In 2016 alone, 4,600 foreign couples got married there. They give them at 9:15 in the morning, and Jonida asks to delay it, so that she has time to fix her hair. “Ah, but are you really going to get married?” The municipal employee is surprised. Carlos realizes that love weddings, like his, should not be styled on the idyllic island. The official, happy with the news, fulfills Jonida’s wish.
The official was delighted that we were a real couple, that we loved each other. They don’t rush you, and after the ceremony they serve you a drink
Carlos’s disappointment with the situation soon dissipates, when the next day they show up, dressed to the nines, at the agreed time. They had bought clothes for the occasion in Aachen and manage to get the bouquet of flowers in a supermarket after finding the Aerø flower shops closed. Now the man from Barcelona admits that in the waiting room they met couples who exuded unions of convenience, such as German women with much younger Chinese boys. But when their turn comes, everything turns out perfect.
“They got us married very well, all very professional. As only my brother came and we needed more witnesses, there were three very nice older ladies there, who did that function. The official was delighted that we were a real couple, that we loved each other. They don’t rush you, and after the ceremony they serve you a drink similar to muscatel,” Carlos continues. At the start, another run to the last morning ferry brings them back to Aachen, where a special celebratory dinner awaits them. The next day, they bring the marriage document issued in English by the Danish authorities in Aerø to their town hall and the registration is done immediately and without questions. The certificate is valid and legal in any corner of the world.
Carlos and Jonida at the wedding ceremony. Image: Carlos.
A law in the spotlight
The happiness of Carlos and Jonida represents only one side of the coin. The other, that of married couples interested in getting papers quickly, is currently in the crosshairs of the Danish Conservative Party (Konservative Folkeparti), which forms a coalition with the center-right Executive of Lars Løkke Rasmussen. Conservatives are seeking to toughen the 1969 marriage law – which allows gay liaisons – and exercise control over applicant couples to curb the sprawl of marriages of convenience in Denmark.
The treatment is spectacular; The service is very professional and the wedding is one hundred percent legal for any city council in the world.
Elisa, also Spanish and living in Germany, has gotten engaged to Yazan, a Syrian refugee in this country, and is seriously considering the Danish option. “We were looking at it on the internet and it seems very easy,” the 33-year-old from Zaragoza comments to elEconomista. “They give many facilities in the event that they ask for papers from Syria that Yazan finds more difficult to obtain; even if you do not have a birth certificate, it is the same with your passport or with the documents you have in Germany,” she continues. “I recommend it one hundred percent,” Carlos encourages her. “The treatment is spectacular; the service is very professional and the wedding is one hundred percent legal for any city council in the world,” he concludes.
Elisa would like to get married before the end of the year and everything seems to indicate that, if she opts for a wedding in Denmark, she will succeed. At least, before a legal modification closes a business that moves between love and bureaucracy and that keeps dozens of towns in the wildest and deepest Scandinavia afloat.
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