Hi there, my partner is Swiss and we have a 'life partnership' agreement in South Africa (we lived there before coming here). I know this agreement isn't recognised in Switzerland and so we are in the process of getting all the paperwork together to get married here in Switzerland.

I'm in Switzerland at the moment on a tourist visa, will I need to leave the country in order to get marriage visa or can they do it while I'm here?

I think you will need to leave the country and apply from South Africa, but check with your local cantonal Migration office to be sure.

Get your partner to do the legwork locally. For Swissies, they are often more flexible than dodgy foreigners...

Thanks for the replies, he is doing the leg-work i'm just trying to figure out if I should organise my trip back or not. I'm told I just need a birth certificate and a letter to say I'm not married, both of which I'm getting but the information on whether I need to leave or not is unclear.

Well if you manage to get married on your tourist stay you will not have to go back. Otherwise you will have to go back after the end of your visa and apply for a new one (for marriage preparation) - usually a D Visa. The embassy in South Africa will then inform the authorities in Switz.

This comment by Trickyt57 from another thread:

Getting married in Switzerland: Visas in anticipation of marrying a Swiss resident are available if one of the partners is a Swiss resident. However they will require you to apply for the visa while you are in your home country, not Switzerland, and then the process is long. They will tell you 3 months, but it is more likely to be 6 months. The paperwork they need is also pretty daunting and enough to make you feel like giving up before you even start. When you get the visa, you basically have 3 months to get married.

At least this may give you some idea of how long it can take.

Your Swiss partner will have to cooperate in the process too, and they will interview him to ask him stupid questions like "when and how did you meet", and they will need proper evidence that he wants to marry you in the form of a letter saying something like "I met her on... We fell in love... We lived together... We signed a life partnership agreement...I want to marry her..."

You probably do have to leave.

Ask whether you can go to a Swiss consulate in a neighboring country to get the marriage visa. You already have a tourist visa, so going anywhere within the Schengen zone should not be an issue.

If you need to leave the Schengen zone and come back. the UK is an option, but I dont know if SA passport holders are eligible for visa free entry to the UK.

I actually have a UK visa so I could go there no problem, I just want to know if I have to go for certain.

Back to S. Africa and apply at the smbassy for a marriage visa. Tourist visa marriages are not allowed here to the best of my knowledge.

It really depends a bit, usually they are simply not doable during the time here. But the sure way is to apply from S. Africa.

I would say for a permit holder, you'd have to leave. For a Swiss citizen, your mileage might vary.

Hardly worth a frickin' groan, mind you.

You certainly cant enter as a tourist and then get a permit. So do plan for a trip outside Switzerland.

If its to the UK or to a neighboring Schengen country, it should be doable easily at short notice.

On another note, any chance of getting married in SA and then filing paperwork at the Swiss Embassy in Cape Town? Dunno what paperwork he'd have to file but maybe it would be easier? Besides, nothing like a good excuse to go home for a visit.