Getting married in Denmark doesn't require living there, and you don't need to be in the country when you apply. If either of you isn't a Danish or Nordic citizen, and doesn't hold an indefinite Danish residence permit, you apply to the Agency of Family Law for a Certificate of Marital Status. It costs DKK 2,100, takes about five working days when your file is complete, and lasts four months. With it, you book a civil ceremony with a Danish municipality, at a town hall or, in Copenhagen, at a place you choose.
The application is between you and the Danish authorities. Wedded Concierge plans the weekend around it, sourcing the celebration venue and supporting your guests' travel. Two clocks set your dates: the four months your approval lasts, and the wait for a ceremony slot once you have it.
The Agency of Family Law (Familieretshuset) checks that you're both free to marry and issues the Certificate of Marital Status. The municipality performs the ceremony. The certificate is the "licence" agencies mention, and a certificate of no impediment from home doesn't replace it.
You must both be 18 or over and unmarried, per Life in Denmark, and the Danish embassy in Canberra confirms that same-sex couples can marry.
The Agency also checks that the marriage isn't pro forma, a sham for residence. It may ask where you met or invite you to a meeting, and a pro forma refusal can't be appealed, so answer fully the first time.
To ask the Agency anything, use the online form on its contact page, so the answer is in writing.
You still apply to the Agency. Where only one of you is a Danish or Nordic citizen, or holds certain Danish residence permits, you both sign an 11(b) declaration confirming you know the Aliens Act rules on family reunification. It doesn't waive your right to apply for reunification later, but without it you can't marry in Denmark. It isn't needed where the foreign partner is an EU citizen.
Everything goes up online as scans or photos. Start gathering nine to twelve months out. Certified copies and translations take longest, and you can apply only in the last four months.
To enter Denmark, each passport must be valid for at least three months after you leave, have two blank pages and have been issued within the last ten years. The Agency wants colour photos of every page, covers included. A passport that expires within the four months shortens the certificate to match, so renew first if yours is close.
You need a document showing your marital status from your country of residence, which may not be the country on your passport. Where you can't provide one, the application asks you to explain why. Fix or explain a middle name written in full on one document and as an initial on another, as no published rule says how the Agency treats a mismatch.
Add the divorce decree, death certificate or annulment that ended the marriage, in the original language plus a translation, and the Agency assesses whether a foreign one can be accepted. Send the final decree, not an interim order, and order a certified court copy early.
The Agency's documentation rules say documents from the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Great Britain and most of continental Europe typically need no apostille or legalisation. Other Apostille Convention countries need an apostille, and documents from countries outside it usually need legalising where they were issued. Anything not in Danish, English or German needs an authorised translation, stamps included.
Since 10 April 2026, applicants from outside the EU document their legal stay in the Schengen area. Without a visa, the Agency asks for the data and result pages from the EES visa calculator, plus your plane tickets or boarding passes, covering your planned stay if you haven't entered yet. If your passport needs a visa, get it first and add the visa sticker, as the calculator doesn't replace it.
Work backwards from your date. The months are a guide for Copenhagen:
Twelve to nine months out, choose the municipality: Hold the celebration venue and hotel on dates that can move, because the legal date is set last.
Nine to five months out, fix your documents: Order certified decrees, renew short passports, correct name mismatches and book translations.
Four months out, apply: Both of your parts must reach the Agency within 14 days of each other, or the case closes and you pay again. The DKK 2,100 fee, set from 1 January 2026, is paid online and isn't refunded.
Within days, answer any questions: A complete file takes about five working days. Files that need more information wait longer, and the Agency is currently working through those received in August 2026.
On approval, book the ceremony: The approval brings a City Hall booking link from Copenhagen, and a slot can be up to four months away.
On the day, bring passports and witnesses: Arrive 10 to 15 minutes early, with an interpreter if either of you doesn't speak the ceremony language.
Before you fly home, collect your certificates: Copenhagen issues two, in Danish, English, French, German and Spanish, so ask for extras if you'll change your name with more than one authority.
Apply in early February, for example, and a complete file comes back within the week with a booking link, for a slot any time up to early June, per Copenhagen's municipality. Give guests the month early, as destination wedding etiquette advises, hold flights and rooms on refundable terms, and ticket only once the slot is confirmed.
A query, a lapsed approval, a moved slot or a council that stops taking foreign couples can push your date after deposits are paid. Ask your venue and hotel for written terms that allow a move of a few weeks. If a venue won't agree, confirm the registrar before you sign.
Wedding insurance and travel insurance are separate policies, and guests should buy their own travel cover when they book flights. Policy wordings rarely list a refused, delayed or lapsed marriage approval as a covered reason to cancel. Treat it as uncovered unless the insurer confirms otherwise in writing, and ask the same of a slot the municipality moves.
A municipality performs every civil ceremony, so where you marry decides whose rules apply.
*Copenhagen City Hall, home of the Bryllupssalen wedding room. Photo: Scythian, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons*
The City Hall ceremony takes about ten minutes in the Bryllupssalen on the first floor, with up to 75 guests. City Hall provides two witnesses, or two guests can sign without ID. Ceremonies run on weekdays from 09:10 to 15:50 and on Saturdays from 10:00 to 12:40, in Danish, English or German.
Guests may film, and family at home can join by video call. There's no lift, only a spiral staircase, so ask for Rådhushallen a week ahead if a guest can't manage stairs.
Copenhagen will send a registrar to a place you choose inside the municipality, such as a garden, home, boat or restaurant, but not City Hall or its garden, for DKK 2,732. You bring two witnesses, and the registrar stays up to 30 minutes and gives a personal speech in Danish or English. With your approval in hand, email wedding@kk.dk no more than four months ahead, for a date at least a month after your request. Cancel inside 30 days and the fee is lost.
Copenhagen's page names no guest limit, and the ceremony happens in a room you control, such as a hotel you've taken over. That makes it the private choice, and older guests avoid City Hall's spiral staircase. A ceremony led by a member of the city council, the Borgerrepræsentation, is free, at City Hall or a place you choose.
Each municipality sets its own days, languages and limits. Tønder marries on Tuesdays and Thursdays, supplies witnesses and works in German and English. A manor beyond Copenhagen means that council's registrar, not Copenhagen's. Dragsholm Slot, a castle hotel with its own chapel, seats 80 for dinner in its Knight's Hall and has 41 rooms.
Capacity is tightening. Dansk Erhverv, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, reported on 14 February 2026 that several municipalities are cutting back on or stopping weddings for international couples, and counted 3,000 foreign couples married on Ærø in 2025 alone. It named no councils, and no published source says whether Zealand is affected, so get your council's written yes before any deposit.
With a ceremony of ten to 30 minutes, the dinner and the rooms shape the day. Neither hotel below publishes wedding rates; each prices by proposal, which your Wedded Advisor can request while sourcing your venue.
Hotel d'Angleterre, on Kongens Nytorv, takes 400 for a reception in its Palm Court or 300 at round tables; the Louis XVI room seats 140 and the salons take 30.
Nimb, inside Tivoli Gardens, lists a family wedding for 30 to 60 guests and a garden wedding for 60 to 140, and tailors overnight stays of ten rooms or more.
A nikah, a church blessing or your own vows can sit alongside the civil ceremony. Keep the civil one as your legal marriage, and ask your faith body and home authorities what effect the other has. For photographers, florists and planners, browse Wedded Marketplace.
Denmark's rules apply to every passport; your paperwork at home differs. If you hold different passports, each of you follows your own country's section, or its authorities where none is listed. Conversions use European Central Bank rates for 19 October 2026 and are approximate.
Smartraveller allows Australians up to 90 days in any 180 in Schengen without a visa. Your state Births, Deaths and Marriages office can issue a statement of no record of marriage, a Single Status certificate or a No Record Result certificate. The Agency's pages don't say which it prefers, so ask it on the contact form before you order. The DKK 2,100 fee is about A$450, and the DKK 2,732 registrar at your venue about A$590.
You can't register the marriage in Australia, but Smartraveller's marriage page says it's recognised if it was valid in Denmark and would have been valid in Australia. It isn't recognised where either of you was already married, under age, too closely related or forced. A foreign certificate may not prove a name change, so ask your BDM whether the English text on the Danish one will do.
The UAE isn't a party to the Apostille Convention, so UAE papers are legalised in the UAE, then translated with the stamps; Lebanese papers are legalised in Lebanon. No published source confirms which status document the Agency takes from a UAE resident: a UAE one, one from your passport country, or both. Ask on the Agency's contact form, above, before ordering either.
Visa rules follow your passport, not your residence visa. Emiratis travel to Denmark visa-free, while Lebanese passport holders, Beirut guests included, need a visa, per New to Denmark. From the UAE, apply through VFS Global in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and don't buy a ticket until the visa is granted, as the Danish mission advises. Gulf News reports that most travel policies exclude war and government airspace closures, so check that wording too.
The DKK 2,100 fee is about AED 1,160 and the DKK 2,732 registrar about AED 1,510, at the dollar peg. For use in the UAE, Gulf News describes attestation in Denmark, at the UAE embassy, then by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for AED 150. Copenhagen's certificates don't include Arabic, so ask whether the receiving office needs a translation.
GOV.UK allows 90 days in any 180 without a visa. A passport renewed before 1 October 2018 may fail the ten-year rule above, so check its issue date, not its expiry. The DKK 2,100 fee is about £235, and the DKK 2,732 registrar about £310.
If either of you divorced in England or Wales, send the final order or decree absolute. There's no UK registration afterwards: GOV.UK issues no certificate for a marriage abroad, so the Danish one is your proof. A passport in your married name needs your marriage certificate, though the page doesn't mention foreign ones, so ask HM Passport Office first.
MoneySavingExpert's guide names venue cancellation and supplier failure as the main reasons to buy wedding insurance, and warns that not every policy covers a wedding abroad. Cover is banded by the wedding's total cost, so an underinsured claim pays only part, and illness cover reaches the couple and wedding party, not every guest. GOV.UK says to buy travel cover once you book and to declare medical conditions, or the policy may be invalid; pass that on to older guests. A GHIC covers only necessary state care and is no substitute for travel insurance.
The State Department says the US government can't attest to your marital status, but you may give a written statement that you're free to marry, notarised at a US embassy if you're abroad. No published source confirms the Agency accepts that statement, so ask on its contact form before you apply.
For recognition, the State Department points you to your state Attorney General's office. If a US office wants an apostille on the Danish certificate, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues one on an original, not a scan, so carry the originals home yourselves. Cancel for any reason travel cover repays 50 to 75 per cent of a trip's price, per the NAIC, so ask in writing whether venue deposits count as trip costs. The DKK 2,100 fee is about US$315, and the DKK 2,732 registrar about US$410.
Wedded Concierge, led by your Wedded Advisor, plans what surrounds the ceremony: the celebration venue sourced around your slot, planner recommendations, suppliers coordinated across countries, guests' travel and lodging, and payments in kroner and your home currency. Your Wedded Advisor keeps the venue, rooms and guest travel in step with the Agency and the municipality, so nothing is fixed before your legal date is. Start with Wedded Concierge, or compare destination weddings in Europe, read the destination wedding guide or see how to plan a destination wedding.
*Prices change, so confirm each one when you book.*
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