Marriage: the Where and How

Once you’ve proposed marriage to a Filipina, and she’s accepted, you’ll have to decide both where the wedding will take place and what manner of ceremony best suits your and your fiancée’s situation.   

More specifically, you must decide whether to marry your fiancée in the Philippines, or in your country, or perhaps even in a third-party country.  You must also decide whether you and your fiancée would prefer a religious or civil ceremony.  If it’s to be a religious ceremony, and you have different faiths, in which church will the ceremony be held, yours or hers?   

Below are a few of the most commonly cited benefits to the most common approaches.  At the end of this section you’ll find some polling data relevant to this discussion. 

 Marriage in the Philippines

 1.  Your fiancée’s family can attend the wedding.  Given the importance of family in the Philippines, and the fact that your new wife will be leaving her family to go live in a foreign land, allowing your fiancée’s family to attend the ceremony and partake in the festivities is a chivalrous thing to do.  Of course, your family will probably not be able to attend.

2.  You can have a really nice wedding in the Philippines for much less money than a wedding of equal extravagance would cost you in your home country.  On the other hand, don’t look for a bounty of wedding presents, and expect to pay for almost everything.  The idea that the father of the bride must pay for the wedding is a western tradition, not a Filipino one, and the presumption is normally that any guy who can buy a ticket to the Philippines can afford to pay for a wedding. 

3.  Filipinos love to party and celebrate, and a wedding in the Philippines can be a LOT of fun.

4.  You may get to experience all the colorful rituals unique to Filipino weddings, such as pinning Pesos to the bride and groom as they dance, exchanging pesos, sharing a veil, etc.   

Marriage in Your Country  

1.  Your family can attend the wedding, though hers cannot.  Even if you were willing to buy every member of your fiancée’s family tickets (congratulations on winning the lottery, by the way), it would be impossible to get them the tourist visas that they would need to make the trip. 

2.  You can obtain a fiancée visa faster than a spousal visa.  Consequently, you’ll spend less time away from your wife if the wedding takes place in your country.   

3.  You can immediately go on your honeymoon and afterwards set up your new home together. 

4.  Allegedly, it is easier get a Catholic priest outside the Philippines to perform a ceremony between a Catholic and non-Catholic than it would be inside the Philippines, due to the stricter practices of the Church in the islands.  If you are not Catholic but your wife desires a Catholic wedding, this is a plus.  

The “Dual Ceremony” Option

1.  You can have a ceremony in the Philippines and in your country.  Both her family and your family can thereby attend a wedding, though only one of them is technically legitimate.  Which comes first is something you’d have to discuss with your fiancée, of course.

2.  You can have both a religious and a civil ceremony.  Perhaps you’d prefer to have a civil ceremony to expedite things, then a religious ceremony a few months later to cement your union and give your bride the “dream wedding” she cherishes.  Or you could have an “unofficial” religious ceremony in the Philippines followed by an official religious or civil ceremony in your homeland.  That would allow your fiancée’s family to attend a wedding in the Philippines, but would not prevent you from petitioning for the quicker-to-obtain fiancée visa. This is tricky, though.  You must ensure that the ceremony in the Philippines is purely ceremonial (pardon the pun) and has no legal merit, because if you really did marry your fiancée in the Philippines, then applied for a fiancée visa, your country’s government might charge you with trying to obtain a fraudulent visa (a fiancée visa instead of a spousal one). 

 Religious Ceremony 

1.  If you and your wife share similar religious conviction, you may feel compelled to perform your vows “in the eyes of God”. 

2.  Religious weddings can be beautiful, highly emotional affairs that you, your wife, and your families will remember fondly for the rest of your lives.

3.  Some women revel in preparing for a wedding – inviting guest, selecting a dress, writing vows, etc.   Normally, civil ceremonies do not require any such preparation, which may not sit well with some brides-to-be.

4.  Religious weddings usually cater better to large congregations of family and friends.  Participants at religious ceremonies can relax and chat in the pews prior to the wedding, and they get to watch and sniffle as the bride walk down the aisle, and they get to toss rice or bird seed at the bride and groom’s car afterwards.  Plus, they get free food!   

Civil Ceremony

1.  If you and your wife had different faiths, a civil ceremony may be the simplest… 

(End of book excerpt – if you’d like the entire text, please consider ordering The ASAWA Guide to Fil-West Relationships.  Thank you!)

All original materials on this website (www.asawa.org, www.filipinawives.com) are copyrighted by the author, Bob Lingerfelt, 1997 -2007  with materials on file at the U.S. Copyright Office.  No reproduction is authorized, in any form, without express permission of the author.