Even though my husband and I have had a religious wedding in India, we still need to complete the legal formalities in order to get a marriage certificate. So it was off to the registry of marriage for us!
There are two registry offices in Mumbai. One is in Bandra, for the people in the suburbs. The other is in the Fort, for residents of south Mumbai. We went to the Fort one because my husband’s family live in Prabhadevi, and that was the address showing on his documents. It’s located in the Old Custom House, and is open from 10 am until 3 pm during the week.
The office is not an attractive one. It’s cramped, full of inefficient government babus, and overflowing with paper. There was also a stray cat roaming around when we were there.
Mumbai Registrar of Marriage, Old Customs House, Fort.
It took us four hours to complete the process of submitting our Notice of Intention to be married. The process was greatly hampered by one particularly unhelpful officer, who either provided us with no answers or misleading answers to our questions.
We had to get the photocopies of our documents notarized. A notary public from the Magistrate’s Court next to the registry office will usually do it. However, he refused to certify mine because they were the documents of a foreigner. He didn’t want to take the risk, even though I had all my original documents to support them.
As a result, we had to take a taxi to another court complex a short distance away. There we paid 50 rupees per document to get them notarized. They were returned to us within five minutes, with the addition of hilarious big red seals, and numerous other stamps. And this time, I didn’t even have to show the originals!
Our notarized documents.
After submitting all the required paperwork, we were told to return in two weeks to determine the date of our “marriage”.
Related Posts:
- How to Legally Marry an Indian in India
- Our Mumbai Registry Marriage
- Another Visit to the Mumbai FRRO
- Another Round of Frustration at the FRRO
- Another Ordinary Day at the Mumbai FRRO
- The Worst Kind of Arranged Marriage
- Enrolling to Vote in India
- Four Hours in the Customs Office
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi!! Sharell
I wanted to see where I can take my wife on new years eve on my visit to Mumbai and looks like Vie Deck will be the place 
I am Harpreet. How’re you?? I was doing my research on Vie Deck & Lounge in Juhu( wanted to see more pictures & comments from other people) and I came across your blogsite. Looks like I will be spending some time here…you have written some good stuff
Caio
Hi , nice blog I am a Pakistani and my wife is Canadian and we had to go thru the same kind of a process back home. Everything is so complicated in South Asia, things which would normally take an hour at max would end up taking a day or 2 and your time in waiting and travelling so its like a mission a word commonly by my wife every time we were out and about there. Are you guys planning to live in India or coming back. Anyways keep us in the loop of whats going around wish you all the best in your married life
Hi Saad, welcome and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the blog! Thanks for sharing your experience too. We plan to live in India for the medium term — we’ll see how it goes after 5 years and evaluate things then. We definitely don’t have any plans to leave India, as both of us are busy here with our own interests. My need to be closer to my family will probably be deciding factor. But who knows what the future holds! Ideally, we’d like to spend time living in both countries. Wishing you both a very happy married life too.
Sharell, I’ve been married for almost an year now and this is the reason my wife & I are not even considering getting our marriage registered! The registrars in Delhi are worse than in Mumbai. Believe me, I’ve not even tried to register it and we have no intention of doing so. Maybe some day when they wake up and simplify their procedure or allow it to be done online then I’ll think about it. Good for you to have gone through those 4 hours. I respect you more for that.
Now that I think some more about it, I’m surprised you got it done in only 4 hours! Lucky you!