Report of Marriage | Philippine Embassy - NEW ZEALAND

Planning to get married abroad? Think twice. *chuckles* I could only imagine the hassle my husband and I went through just to get our Report of Marriage. So what is Report of Marriage?

Report of Marriage is a requirement for Filipino overseas who have contracted a marriage abroad whether to a fellow Filipino or a foreign spouse. You should report your marriage within a year or it will be considered as late registration. 

If you read my previous posts, you should know by now that I am a Filipino even though I married abroad. Before I can use my husband's last name, I have to report our marriage to the Philippine Embassy/Consulate where the marriage took place. (Take note that a married woman has the option but not obliged to use husband's last name under Civil code Article 370)

This is a sample form of the Report of Marriage

It is very important to report your marriage specially if you want to renew your passport using your husband's last name. According to PSA Cebu representative that there are only few cases where Filipinos who married abroad reported their marriage in the Philippine Embassy/Consulate having jurisdiction over the locality where the wedding took place. 

To report our marriage, we coordinated with Philippine Embassy in Wellington, New Zealand through Ms. Maribel Garcia (marybel.garcia@philembassy.org.nz) one of the Mobile Consular Team in Wellington. 

Here are the following requirements for the Report of Marriage in Philippine Embassy - New Zealand: REPORT OF MARRIAGE REQUIREMENTS | PHILIPPINE EMBASSY NEW ZEALAND In their site they only wrote 3 copies but in our case, they asked us for 4 copies. 

We paid NZ $37.50 (US $25) plus NZ $5.00 for bank processing charge. He added up US $5.00 so the total payment amounted to USD $30.00 in the form of a Cashier's Check. REQUIREMENTS FOR DELAYED REGISTRATION OF REPORT OF MARRIAGE CLICK HERE

We finally received our Report of Marriage this year, April 2016. However, that doesn't end there. Please click here to know the steps on how we got our Report of Marriage in SECPA

TIMELINE:

1. Our Report of Marriage was shipped in late January, 2016. 
2. It was received by the Philippine Embassy in New Zealand on February 3, 2016.
3. I emailed the Philippine Embassy before the package arrived. However, I received no reply at first. 
4. Their first reply was in early March, 2016. They claimed that my payment in USD couldn’t be accepted, because the bank fee to process it would be too high. I argued their claim using the Schedule of Fees on their own website including the instructions for sending payments in USD. They claimed that according to the bank, my payment would take 1-2 months to process. 
5. The Philippine Embassy finally processed our Report of Marriage on March 30 and mailed it back to us. Additional copies were forwarded to the DFA Manila and PSA.
6. We received our Report of Marriage from the Philippine Embassy on April 4, 2016.
7. We requested our PSA Authenticated Report of Marriage printed in SECPA on May 30.
8. We received our PSA Authenticated Report of Marriage printed in SECPA 1 week later on on June 6.