The Marriage Registration - Background Information

I think we have made our loyal readers wait tooooooooo long. We must apologise for the loooooooong wait. There are just toooooo many things which happened all at once, and we need some time to prepare the posts. It does not mean that we have forgotten or become lazy. It is just that our private lives and our work lives are full of events all at once. Please be patient; for once we are back in pace, new posts will be uploaded.

This post was prepared to show our audience just a bit of information on how our customs of getting married in Hong Kong and Japan are different.

□■Background
Marriage is logistically an easy thing when the bride and the groom is of the same country. Under that country's law and custom, bride and the groom requests legal authority (whether this is a social or religious authority) for an eternal vow between the couple. And when the authority approves this "legal contract", the bride and the groom becomes a "bonded couple for life".

However, things are different when the bride and the groom is from a different country. We need to get both of our countries' authority to acknowledge that we had registered as a married couple. In our case, we took the choice of getting a legal authority in Hong Kong to register a HK citizen and a foreign spouse marriage, and then report this to the Japan authority.

However much we are a "married couple", that doesn't mean that the foreigner can come into the country like its citizen. If it is that easy, then a criminal of country A can force a person in country B to get married and escape to another country. It doesn't work as easy as this. The spouse of must apply for a legal permit for that "foreigner" to stay in his/her spouse's country. In our case, this applies to Carol to apply for legal permit to stay in Japan, since in the long run, we are planning to base are lifestyle in there.

So, the battle of getting the legal permit - called the spouse visa - starts here. Getting a spouse visa seems simple but really not for Japan. It requires:
1. Applying for legal permit to keep Carol in Japan for extended time (over the 90 days tourist visa). This is called the 在留資格認定証明書. It has a number (in fact, many many) of items we need to prepare, which includes snapshots of us two (to prove we are labu labu and that we did perform the marriage ceremony), an essay of how we got together until we decide to get marry, etc. This process takes from 1 to 3 months.
2. When the permit is issued, it is then sent to the citizen's (Jin's) address.
3. Citizen (Jin) delivers this to the foreigner (Carol).
4. Foreigner (Carol) takes this to the Japan Consulate Visa section and applies for the spouse visa. This takes about 2-3 days.
5. The spouse visa is issued to the foreigner (Carol).
6. Foreigner (Carol) buys a one way ticket to the country (Japan) and flies.
7. If the immigration passes through, then 無問題. Foreigner (Carol) can stay for 3years (limit for spouse visa). If not, then we need to start from step 1 once again and foreigner cannot enter the country.
8. Within 90 days after arrival into the nation, foreigner (Carol) needs to request for a "foreigner registration card" 外国人登録証明書 which serves as an ID in Japan.
9. After the limitation of the spouse visa, the foreigner has three choices:
a. Apply for naturalisation (Carol becomes a Japanese).
b. Apply for permanent alien visa (no need to renew, and can keep the alien status).
c. Apply for an extension of spouse visa (3years once again).


Phew, ... Really a long and scary project we are in.... (>_______<;
However, we have barely stood on its starting line. The project starts from here!!!


□■Difference of HK and JP "Marriage Registration"
a. Hong Kong: ceremony
The Hong Kong style Marriage Registration is a full-fledged ceremony. The couple applies, pays the deposit and picks the date of registration. After then, our marriage request will be posted up for public evaluation for 2weeks. Once no objections are made within this period, the date is confirmed and we are good to register.

On the day of marriage (in our case, we only did the registration, but it is common that the wedding ceremony and the marriage registration are done on the same day), we start from early morning to be the best bride and groom of the day, and move to the registration office. There, we first of all pay the charges for registration and submit our ID's. Then, in the actual ceremonial hall, we vow in front of our guests that we will become a married couple, and have our marriage rings exchanged and marriage certificate signed by two witnesses.

The marriage certificate is then provided at the end of the registration ceremony. Then, all is dismissed for further photo shooting and/or lunch. The ceremony was in total of about 30 min.

b. Japan: logistical handling of paperwork
In Japan, marriage registration is just a submission of paperwork. There is a form we have to submit which requests the legal authority to move the bride into groom's family tree (or visa versa, if groom decides to take the bride's family name). This form is called a 婚姻届 and this also requires two witnesses to sign and place a chop (印鑑). The bride and the groom, or either one can submit this form, and this can be handed in at any time (24x7); during non-office hours, the guard on duty will receive the form, but the record of submission will be counted on the date and time of submission to the guard. There are no certificate of marriage provided, but a sheet of paper which proves that the form has been received 結婚届受理書 so that at least, this proves that the marriage request has been submitted. After several days, the family tree 戸籍 will contain the name of the spouse under the groom's family tree. There are no charges or ceremony to be performed. This is just a transaction over the counter and will not take more than 5min.

However in our case, since we had already performed the marriage registration in HK, we cannot do it once again. What we can do is to report to the JP legal office that we have married under the HK law and obligations. In order to do so, we went to the JP consulate office in HK. This is the only legal office representing Japan and have Japanese authority and legality in HK. After filing the necessary form to report to the JP consulate, it normally takes about 2months to reflect the marriage registration to my family certificate 戸籍.


So, as seen above, the practices are quite different. Let's see how we have done in the next post (coming up soon) of what went on during the Marriage Registration!