Marriage Registration Delhi

Quick answer: Marriage registration in Delhi is done at the SDM office and produces a government marriage certificate in about 7 days (registration fee ₹100 under the Hindu Marriage Act, ₹15 under the Special Marriage Act; Tatkal ₹10,000). Our assisted package is from ₹6,000. You need age proof, Aadhaar, address proof, marriage proof/photos and two witnesses. Already-married couples can register an existing marriage too.

Marriage Registration Delhi — Complete Guide

Marriage Registration means official Government registration of an already-solemnized marriage. In Delhi, after the 2014 Delhi Compulsory Marriage Registration Order, registration of every marriage is mandatory — Hindu, Arya Samaj, Court Marriage or any religion.

Our Arya Samaj Court Marriage Delhi service handles every kind of Marriage Registration — recent marriages, marriages from 5-10-20 years ago, and even marriages performed outside Delhi for registration in Delhi. 15,000+ couples register through us each year.

Marriage Registration Acts

1. Hindu Marriage Act 1955 — Registration

For Hindu couples (Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist). Marriage must be already solemnized (in Mandir or by Hindu rites). Submit Form A at SDM Office. Both parties present. Certificate in 7-15 days.

2. Special Marriage Act 1954 — Registration

For inter-religion or secular couples. Already-married couples can also register under this act. 30-day notice optional in some cases. Religion-neutral certificate.

3. Delhi Compulsory Marriage Registration Order 2014

Marriage Registration is mandatory for every couple in Delhi. Aim is women's rights protection. ₹100-1000 penalty for non-registration.

Marriage Registration Documents

Marriage Registration Process

1. Application Submission: Form A (Hindu) or Form B (Special Marriage Act) at concerned SDM Office.
2. Documents Verification: SDM staff verify documents.
3. Appointment Date: After verification, appointment scheduled.
4. SDM Appearance: Both parties + 2 witnesses present.
5. SDM Verification: Marriage facts confirmed.
6. Certificate Issued: Same day or 7-15 days.

Marriage Registration Fees

What Registration Actually Is — and What It Is Not

Almost every worry people bring to us about marriage registration dissolves once this one distinction is clear, so we will start with it.

That is the whole of it. The marriage is the ceremony and the consent. The certificate is the evidence. People are sold a great deal of anxiety on this point, usually by somebody who wants to charge for relieving it.

The legal backing sits in three places:

• Section 8 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 provides for registration of Hindu marriages, and leaves the detail to rules made by the state government. Delhi’s rules provide for registration by the Registrar in whose jurisdiction the marriage was solemnised, or in whose jurisdiction either party has been residing.
• The Delhi (Compulsory Registration of Marriage) Order, 2014 makes registration compulsory for marriages solemnised in Delhi, whatever the religion of the parties, with the time limits set out below.
• Seema v. Ashwani Kumar (Supreme Court, 2006) is the decision behind all of this — the Court directed the States and Union Territories to make registration of marriages compulsory, precisely because unregistered marriages were leaving women unable to prove the most basic fact about their own lives.

Note the first of those carefully, because it answers the question we are asked most: Delhi registers a marriage where it was solemnised as well as where a party resides. That is why a couple from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh who marry in Delhi can register here without having lived here first, and why a home-state Aadhaar is not a disqualification.

The Time Limits — and the One Deadline That Is Absolute

Under the Delhi Order, for a marriage solemnised in Delhi:

So the penalties are small and the door stays open. We register marriages from the 1990s regularly, and there is nothing unusual or shameful about it. Being late costs you a four-figure penalty at worst, not the right to register.

Which Law Applies to Your Marriage

The route depends on how you were married, not on what you would like it to be called.

The distinction that matters at the counter: under the Hindu Marriage Act and the Delhi Order you are registering a marriage that already happened, and the office is satisfying itself that it did. Under the Special Marriage Act the office performs the marriage, after a thirty-day public notice. They are different processes with different timelines, and a great deal of confusion — and a good deal of overcharging — comes from treating them as one.

If You Are an Inter-Faith Couple Who Already Married by Ceremony

This comes up often enough to need its own answer, because the wrong answer costs people two months.

If a ceremony has already taken place and it is a ceremony recognised by one of the personal-law statutes above, you are ordinarily registering that marriage under that law — you are not starting a Special Marriage Act file with its thirty days’ notice. Whether your particular ceremony qualifies depends on the facts and on the documents you hold, and it is exactly the sort of thing to put in front of us on the first call rather than to guess at.

If no ceremony has taken place and neither of you will convert — and nobody should convert to speed up paperwork — then the Special Marriage Act is the route, it takes about sixty days, and our fee for it is ₹15,000. Our inter-religion marriage guide sets out the options honestly.

Proving a Marriage From Years Ago

The single most useful section on this page for the families who need it most. If your wedding was in a village in 2003, the photographs are on paper, the pandit has died and nobody kept a receipt, this is how it is actually done.

In descending order of strength:

1. An attested register extract with the entry number from the mandir, gurudwara, masjid or church. This is the strongest thing you can go and get, and almost nobody thinks of it. Registers are kept by the institution, not by the individual — so a pandit or qazi who has died, retired or moved away is usually not the end of the road. Go and ask. Take a photograph of the register page if they allow it, and ask for the extract on the institution’s letterhead with a stamp.
2. Witnesses who genuinely know you as a married couple — two of them, with their own original identity documents. Neighbours who have lived in the same lane for twenty years are exactly this.
3. Your children’s birth certificates and school records naming both of you as parents. Quietly one of the most persuasive documents there is, because it was created years ago for another purpose entirely.
4. The ration card and any government record showing the household.
5. The wedding card and ceremony photographs. Phone photographs are fine. What matters is that both of you are visible at the ceremony.
6. A joint bank account, a joint rent agreement, property papers, an employer’s record naming the spouse, or an insurance policy naming the spouse — anything that shows the years passing.
7. Affidavits from both spouses setting out the date and place of the marriage. We prepare these; they are the frame, not the proof.

If the papers are old or fragile: photograph them flat, in good light, before you handle them any further. If a nikahnama or a certificate is in Urdu or another language, you will usually need a certified translation with the names spelled exactly as they appear on Aadhaar. Our Seelampur guide deals with handwritten, damaged and lost certificates in full detail.

If a document is lost entirely: search first, then look for an old photocopy, then go to the institution for the register extract, then file a police lost-article report online if a formal record of the loss helps, and then apply with an affidavit explaining the position. What you must not do is let anybody “arrange” a replacement. A manufactured document in a marriage file is discovered years later at a passport counter, and by then it cannot be quietly fixed.

Address Proof, and the Myth That Stops People Applying

A very large number of people never apply because they believe they cannot. They are usually wrong.

A home-state address proof is a valid address proof. An Aadhaar showing a village in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh is a real government document, not a defect, and an enormous share of marriages registered in Delhi every year involve exactly that. Combined with the solemnisation limb described above, it is usually enough.

What is commonly accepted: Aadhaar, voter identity card, passport, driving licence, a utility bill in your own name, a bank passbook or statement with the address printed, a ration card, or a registered rent agreement. A notarised eleven-month rent agreement is often accepted and sometimes queried, so do not let it be your only plan.

If you live in a rented room, a shared room, or a quarter on an employer’s plot — the electricity bill is in somebody else’s name and there is no rent agreement — bring what you actually have and let the office assess it. Do not decide in advance that you do not qualify. Our Vasant Vihar guide was written for exactly this situation.

What we will never do is claim a Delhi address you do not have, prepare an affidavit for a residence you do not live at, or use a friend’s address on your application. That is the request we refuse most often, and the reason is simple: a false address sits on a public record for the rest of your life.

Worth doing anyway: once your tenancy or your situation is stable, update your Aadhaar to your actual Delhi address. A rent agreement is among the documents UIDAI accepts for an address update, and once your Aadhaar agrees with your life, every future application in Delhi gets simpler.

“Tatkal” and Same-Day Claims: What Is and Is Not Possible

Delhi has offered a tatkal facility for marriage registration, under which an appointment and the certificate can be obtained far faster on payment of a substantially higher prescribed government fee — commonly quoted at ₹10,000. Availability, eligibility and the fee are set by the government and they change, so confirm the current position on the Delhi e-District portal before planning around it, and treat any figure you read on a website, including this one, as something to verify.

What matters far more is understanding what it does and does not do:

• It can speed up the appointment and issue in a registration of a marriage that has already been solemnised.
• It cannot shorten the Special Marriage Act’s thirty-day notice period. That period is in the statute. No fee, no tatkal counter, no contact and no emergency shortens it, and an office that appeared to do so would be acting outside the Act.
• It is a government fee, not our fee. Anybody who quotes you a single lump sum for “tatkal” without separating the government charge from their own is hiding something.

What the Certificate Actually Unlocks

Not theory — the specific things that have been refused to people for want of it.

And what it does not do, so that nobody is sold a promise: it does not make anybody an owner of anything, it does not put a spouse’s name on a house or a bank account, it is not an address proof in most offices’ practice, and it does not override a valid will. It proves one fact — who the spouse is — and almost everything else then turns on that fact.

Who Attends, and What Happens at the Appointment

Less frightening than people expect, and knowing its shape removes most of the nerves.

Both spouses attend in person. There is no power-of-attorney registration, no video-call registration and no arrangement under which a relative, an employer or an agent stands in for one party. If one of you is abroad, the appointment waits until you are both in Delhi — plan the trip around it rather than hoping.

Two witnesses attend, each an adult who genuinely knows you, each carrying their own original photo identity and address proof. For registering an old marriage, witnesses who know you as a married couple are the strongest kind.

We do not provide witnesses. Not for a fee, not as a favour, not because you are new to the city. It is a fixed term of how we work and it is in our terms and conditions. A paid witness is a false statement to a public authority, and it leaves your record open to challenge exactly when you most need it solid.

At the counter the officer checks the documents against the application and asks straightforward questions to confirm who you are and that the marriage took place. There is no interrogation and nothing to be caught out on if your papers are honest. Dress as you would for any office, arrive early, and keep the originals together in one folder in one person’s hands.

Why Applications Get Rejected or Stalled

In our experience, in order of frequency. Almost all of it is preventable on the first call.

1. Names spelled differently across the application, the Aadhaar, the age proof and the ceremony certificate. Fix this before you apply, not during.
2. Age proof missing, because it is in a trunk in another state. Start this item first and have it couriered.
3. A previous marriage not documented — no decree, no death certificate, just an assurance.
4. A ceremony certificate that does not say what the applicant thinks it says, or a photograph that does not show both parties.
5. An address claimed that the documents do not support.
6. Witnesses who cannot be produced, or who arrive without originals.
7. Uploads that are unreadable — a dark photograph of a document is a rejection waiting to happen. Scan or photograph flat, in daylight, with all four corners visible.
8. Both spouses not present on the day.
9. The wrong process chosen — a Special Marriage Act file opened when a registration under the Hindu Marriage Act was all that was needed, costing two months for nothing.

Corrections, Duplicates, and the Difference Between Them

Three different things, confused constantly, including by people charging for them.

• A duplicate is another copy of a certificate that exists. What speeds it up enormously is the registration number and the date of registration — if you have those, even on an old photocopy or written in a diary, the record is found quickly. A recent record is often located in about two weeks; an old paper register can take three to six. ₹2,500.
• A correction fixes something that was never true — a misspelt name, a wrong father’s name, a wrong date. It needs the supporting document that proves the correct particular. ₹2,500.
• A post-marriage name change is not a correction at all. No law requires anybody to change their surname. If you choose to, the sequence is affidavit, newspaper notices, Gazette of India, then Aadhaar, PAN, bank KYC, employer, and the passport last — because a passport name change is a re-issue and changes the passport number. Universities do not reissue a degree in a new name. Our Saket guide sets out the whole sequence.

Before you order any copy, ask the office or embassy that wants it which form it needs — plain, self-attested, notarised, office-certified or apostilled. They are different things and ordering the wrong one costs a week for nothing. An apostille is needed only where the document is going to a country party to the Hague Convention; others need embassy attestation.

And a reminder that matters on old files: a certificate is not invalidated because the office that issued it has since been renamed, merged or abolished. Under the reorganisation effective 1 January 2026, Delhi has 13 districts and 39 sub-divisions, and several familiar names are gone — Shahdara, a district since 2012, is now a sub-division of North East; Saraswati Vihar no longer exists as a sub-division. None of that touches your document. Anybody offering to “renew” a certificate for that reason is selling you nothing.

The Boring Half Hour After You Get the Certificate

Do this in the first month, while you are still near the office that issued it. It is the part everybody postpones and then regrets.

• Photograph it and email it to both of you. Keep the original flat, not folded in a wallet. Write the registration number and date of registration on a separate note kept somewhere else — that note is what makes a future duplicate quick.
• Get two or three attested copies made now, not later.
• Update every nomination. EPF Form 2 and gratuity Form F nominations do not carry over on marriage, and a great many people still have a parent named years later. Check insurance, bank accounts and PPF too. And note that a nominee is a receiver, not an owner — nomination does not override succession law, with a deliberate exception for insurance, where a parent, spouse or child nominee is a beneficial nominee.
• Aadhaar and bank KYC, for whichever of you has moved or is changing a name.
• Employer records — spouse details, medical cover (usually a window of about 30 days), emergency contact.
• Ration card and voter roll, if you are settling here.
• A will, if you own anything worth arguing about. It is an advocate’s work, it costs little against what it settles, and we take no share of that fee.

Fees, at Cost and in Full

The same for everybody. They do not rise because you are in a hurry, because a visa interview is next month, or because you called on a Sunday.

Government charges are separate and shown at cost, on their own line of your receipt with our charge on another. We add nothing to them and round nothing up — that includes the late-registration ₹500 or ₹1,000, and the tatkal fee if you choose it. If your receipt does not let you see exactly where every rupee went, tell us and we will rewrite it. The full list is on our fees page, and it is the same list on every page of this site.

Costs that are yours and not ours: e-stamp paper and notary charges for affidavits; photographs; courier if documents must come from another state; translation and attestation where a document is not in English; and an advocate’s fee for anything that ends in a court. We take no share of any advocate’s fee and we have no arrangement with anybody.

A Realistic Timeline

Nobody in this trade can beat these numbers. What a good service does is stop you losing a week to an unreadable upload, a missing age proof or an office you were never allotted — which is where most real delay actually comes from.

Four Situations, and What Happened

Anonymised, and each stands for many.

The 2011 marriage and the visa interview. Married by ceremony in Uttar Pradesh, living in Delhi since, never registered. A spouse visa application asked for the certificate. They brought the wedding card, photographs, the mandir’s register extract with the entry number and two neighbours. Registered in eleven days, correctly showing the 2011 date. The extract was the piece they had not known they could ask for.

The couple who did not need the sixty-day route. Both Hindu, married by ceremony the previous year, told by an agent that they needed a Special Marriage Act file with a thirty-day notice. They did not — the ceremony had already happened, so it was a registration. We told them on the first call, and it cost them ₹6,000 and ten days instead of two months and ₹15,000. We would rather make that call than take the larger booking.

The name that stalled everything. Certificate said one spelling, Aadhaar another, passport a third — three clerks over fifteen years writing a name differently. Nothing was wrong with the marriage. One correction application and one “same person” affidavit, and it moved. It would have cost nothing at all if it had been checked before the file was opened.

The widow who came three weeks late. Married in 2009, never registered, husband died in an accident. We could not register it, because registration is not possible after a death, and no fee changes that. She had to prove the relationship for the insurance claim another way — photographs, children’s records, witnesses, affidavits and an advocate — and it took months. This is the paragraph we most want people to read while they still have the choice.

What We Will Not Do

• We do not provide witnesses.
• We do not touch an under-age marriage. Under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 the minimum age is 21 for the groom and 18 for the bride. We decline in every case, at any price, and we decline where a document appears to have been altered.
• We stop if either party is not giving a clear, free yes in their own words — and we speak to both of you separately to find out.
• We do not register a marriage while an earlier one subsists.
• We do not manufacture a residence, an affidavit, an age proof or a ceremony certificate, and we do not back-date anything.
• We do not promise a government certificate the same day, and we will tell you when a date you have set is not achievable.
• We do not charge an urgency, distance, weekend or deadline surcharge.
• We do not practise law. Divorce, maintenance, custody, succession, protection petitions and property go to an independent advocate acting in their own name, whose fee we take no share of.
• We do not discuss your file with anybody — not a family, not an employer, not a caller who says it is urgent.

What Happens When You Call Us

1. You send photographs on WhatsApp — age proof and identity for both, whatever you have from the ceremony, and anything about a previous marriage.
2. We tell you within minutes which process applies, what is missing, and the honest timeline — including when the answer is “not by your date” or “this is a registration, not the sixty-day route you were told about”.
3. You get a written quote with our charge and the government charges on separate lines, before anything is paid.
4. We prepare the affidavits and the application, and tell you exactly what to bring and whom to bring.
5. You both attend, with your two witnesses.
6. You check the certificate at the counter, and then we tell you the boring things to do in the following month.

Phone and WhatsApp: +91 8376863962. Marriage registration ₹6,000 · nikah registration ₹6,000 · Arya Samaj marriage with registration ₹7,100 · court marriage assistance ₹6,100 · Special Marriage Act ₹15,000 · duplicates and corrections ₹2,500. Government charges separate and at cost.

This page is general information about the law and the procedure, not legal advice on your own case. Statutes, rules, fees and office allocations change, and the office in front of you applies the current version — confirm the details on the Delhi e-District portal before you act. We are a marriage documentation and coordination service, not a law firm; we do not practise law and we do not appear anywhere.

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