Marriage Certificates and other aliens ;-)

Just thought of putting this here as a help to any poor newly-married Bangalorean couple who've been married under the Hindu Marriage Act. Dunno whether this applies to whole of India or not but here goes:

What?

A marriage certificate is a letter signifying the registration of a marriage.

Why?

This is required and asked for in many processes like applying for a passport, addition of spouse name in Passport, application of visa et cetera.

Requirements

• Date-of-birth proof for both wife and husband


• Address proof for the place both are currently residing


• Proof of marriage - Invitation card + 2-3 marriage photos (postcard size) with both husband and wife featured prominently.


• Note: all the above need to signed by both husband and wife

How?

• Firstly find out what sub-registrar office your area belongs to.


• Go there and collect an application form for marriage certificate.


• There are 2 forms which require signatures from 3 witnesses. These witnesses just have to sign and need not be present in the sub-registrar office. So they can be relatives, friends, neighbours etc, but relationship if any, needs to be mentioned in the form.


• There will be 3 copies of the marriage certificate. These should NOT be filled.


• After completing filling up of the rest of the forms, both the husband and wife need to go to the sub-registrar office and submit them.


• Rest of the formalities will be as directed by the office staff there.

The whole process took about 15 min, about Rs.300 (including official as well as non-official purposes :-D) and 2 days for the marriage certificate to be issued. I hope I haven't missed anything here.. If anybody reading this has any queries, please leave a comment so that I'll reply if I know anything about what you are asking ;-)

As you'd have guessed by now this is what I accomplished on Saturday and they've asked me to come back today evening for the certificate. Saturday evening, we had been to my parents' place and later spent the night there. Yesterday we went to Ramanagar to my Puttanna chikkappa's place. God, him and Veena aunty had prepared so many dishes for lunch - ghee rice, salad, kosambri, masala papad, anna, saaru, mosaranna, kheeru payasa. Later in the evening, mysore-pak and home-made samosas. My stomach's still reeling from the after-effects ;-)