Hi all,

I am Swiss currently living in Texas and new to this forum. My boyfriend and I are thinking about getting married and moving to Switzerland. He is Indian citizen and we are both in the US with working visas.

I am somewhat unsure if it is better to get married here (US) and register the marriage with the Swiss consulate and then move to Switzerland, or to get married in Switzerland. I am aware of both procedures and involved paperwork but I am more interested if anybody can share some experiences.

The procedure in Switzerland seems rather tedious, at least I read information that the validation of Indian papers can take a long time and costs a lot of money. The registration at the Swiss embassy seems quite straight forward, but I don't know how long this would take and if there are any potential problems/delays/costs with his Indian papers (e.g. birth certificate). At least my boyfriend could keep working in the US during this time.

In any case, I would be most happy hearing about any experiences in similar situations

We opted for the abroad version as the Swiss version was extremely cumbersome. Also that way we could get married once and didn't have to do the double procedure as you have to do here (Standesamt and church).

Church isn't mandatory, but it sounds like avoiding the Swiss system where possible is worth considering. The process can be time-consuming anyway, given this marriage recognition thread:

$1000 to Approve an Indian Birth Certificate ?!!!

I would ask your local consulate what they would recommend. There are pros and cons to both.

You might want to get some legal advice as well (especially if the consulate is not really helpful with information). The Swiss system offers certain possibilities on how you "structure" the marriage. By this I mean do you keep your assets separately or group them etc. Remember, in Switzerland marriage is a contract with certain rights and obligations (hence needing to do a civil wedding and only if you wish do you do a religious one). It is the civil wedding that counts.

Since you are going to move to Switzerland (and unfortunately 50% of marriages split up), I suggest that you do the marriage in Switzerland so should something happen you are in the same jurisdiction and system.

I have not touched on any of the issues related to the question of the nationality of your spouse and permits etc.

Best wishes in any event.

__________________
Do or do not, there is no try(ing). Yoda

My husband and I are both U.S. citizens and decided to get married before we came to Switzerland because of the residence/work permit situation. It was so much easier to move together since we were married.

Getting married in Switzerland on an Indian Passport is a nightmare. I would think its probably easier in the USA.

My wife is German, and I am American. We decided to get
married in the US because the paperwork is less expensive
and much less cumbersome.

You will have to get an "Apostille" on your marriage certificate
for it to be valid in Switzerland. The authorities in Zug took
it without questioning.

The problem is that they will still have to go through this for the husband's B permit.

Whatever you do, do not get married in India. The process of verifying the marriage actually happened is incredibly time consuming. My husband and I had a religious ceremony in India but decided to hold a civil registration ceremony in Australia (I am an australian citizen, he's an indian citizen).

Upon coming here our Australian marriage certificate was accepted without a problem. However, a friend of ours who was married 8 years ago in India has been waiting for about five months now for his marriage certificate to be 'verified' and in the meantime his wife and son are waiting in India for him. I am not sure what this process involves, but any paperwork coming from India seems to be more suspect than paperwork coming from a 'western' country.

Assuming your fiance is interested in eventually naturalising to Swiss citizenship I would call the consulate and find out what is the best way to do it- you may find the paperwork down the track is significantly reduced if you jump through the hoops now, and produce all the paperwork required to get married in CH.

Good luck!

Hello

I had a post on here but it was removed the Nathu,

Please refer to my thread:

Should Non-Caucasians seriosly reconsider coming to Switzerland?

I think your partner may want to consider my views before coming to Switzerland

SwissinTexas,

My recommendation is get married in the US and then have your marriage registered with the appropriate Swiss Consulate that deals with where you currently reside in Texas. Your new husband is automatically entitled to his B residence permit, which he can apply for while in the US. The only caveat is that, I do not know how the Swiss consulate views the timing (amount of time you are married, then wishing to move to Switzerland). It was not an issue for us, as we were married 5 years before we moved to Switzerland.

This is what my wife and I did-my wife is Swiss/US citizen and I'm US citizen. We had our civil (legal) marriage performed in US- very straight forward process, get marriage license and go to court house with witnesses and judge says your are married. Done. Then my wife informed the Swiss Consulate of her change of status and had our marriage registered and recognized by the Swiss Embassy, a few months later we did our religious ceremony in Switzerland. Then 5 years later we moved to Switzerland. We considered doing the civil process in Switzerland, it was a big paperwork hassle and cost a fortune, so if became irrelevant when the same thing was achieved by civil (legal) marriage in US.

If you need to heed Verbier's advice, ie divorce planning before the marriage, then you have no business getting married. Also, generally divorce laws are dicated by your place of residence and not where you get married.

Good luck.

The OP asked a question about whether to perform a ceremony here or overseas. What does that have to do with being a caucasian or not?

I understand (though vehemently disagree) with your point, but to harp on about it, at the cost of highjacking the OP is ridiculous.

I don't know please could you explian are you saying if you are caucasian you should not get married in Switzerland or if you a cauky type of Asian

Please could you elaborate?

By the way I am not try to hi-jakc this thread but the moderator may decided differently

Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate it.

Marrying here (US) probably will be the better option, and then it takes as long as it takes to get it all settled with the Swiss authorities... We are not considering to marry in India, we will only go there for the religious ceremony .