NRI Marriage India / Delhi

Quick answer: NRI marriage in India starts from ₹5,100 and produces a certificate that is MEA-apostilled and embassy-attested for use in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, UAE and beyond — valid for spouse-visa applications. At least one partner should be present; we guide document requirements (passport, visa, OCI/PIO where applicable) country by country. Same-day Arya Samaj option available, with SDM registration under the Hindu or Special Marriage Act.

NRI Marriage India — Complete Service Guide

NRI Marriage India service is for couples where one or both partners are NRI (Non-Resident Indian), PIO (Person of Indian Origin), OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) or Foreign National. Our Arya Samaj Court Marriage Delhi service helps 5,000+ NRI couples each year — from Canada, USA, UK, Australia, Dubai, Singapore, Germany worldwide.

Our NRI Marriage service is end-to-end — Pre-arrival consultation, Document pre-verification (online), Airport pickup arrangement, Same day Marriage Ceremony, SDM Court Registration, Marriage Certificate, MEA Apostille, Embassy Attestation, and Spouse Visa Documentation — all in one package.

NRI Marriage Process

1. Online Consultation (Free): Discuss your case via WhatsApp/Email. Our team checks eligibility.
2. Document Pre-Verification: Send scans/photos — we verify and notify what's missing.
3. Travel Planning: We can arrange hotel + airport pickup.
4. Marriage Day: Same Day Vedic Vivah Ceremony at Mandir. Mandir Certificate instantly.
5. SDM Court Registration: Government Marriage Certificate in 7-15 days.
6. MEA Apostille: MEA Apostille seal on certificate.
7. Embassy Attestation: Attestation by concerned country's Embassy.
8. Spouse Visa Documentation: Full visa application support.

NRI Marriage Documents Required

Country-Wise Service

🇺🇸 USA NRI Marriage

For US H1B, Green Card, Citizens. K1 Fiancé Visa or CR1/IR1 Spouse Visa documentation. US Embassy Delhi attestation included.

🇨🇦 Canada NRI Marriage

For Canadian PR, Citizens. Spousal Sponsorship Visa application support. Apostille + Canadian Embassy attestation.

🇬🇧 UK NRI Marriage

For UK ILR, Citizens, Work Visa holders. UK Spouse Visa documentation. UK Embassy Delhi attestation.

🇦🇺 Australia NRI Marriage

For Australia PR, Citizens. Partner Visa (Subclass 309/100) documentation. Apostille for Australia.

🇦🇪 UAE / Dubai NRI Marriage

For UAE Resident Visa holders. MOFA attestation, UAE Embassy attestation.

🇸🇬 Singapore NRI Marriage

For Singapore PR, EP holders. Apostille + Singapore Embassy attestation. LTVP application support.

NRI Marriage Fees

The Two Rules That Decide Every NRI Marriage Plan

Before any of the detail, two facts. Almost every NRI marriage that goes wrong goes wrong because somebody did not know one of them.

Which Route Fits Your Trip

This table is the whole planning problem in one place. Read the “residence” column first, because for a visitor it is usually the deciding factor.

The honest summary for most couples on a three-week visit: if both of you are Hindu, Sikh, Jain or Buddhist, the Arya Samaj route with registration is the one that actually fits, and it is not a lesser marriage — it is a Hindu marriage under section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, with the registration under section 8 that every embassy acts on. If you are of different faiths and neither will convert, the Special Marriage Act is the correct route and it needs about sixty days with thirty of them as residence before notice is even given — which means, bluntly, that it does not fit a two-week trip and you should plan a different visit rather than let anybody tell you it can be rushed.

If You Are Already Married Abroad

A very common and very misunderstood situation, so here it is plainly.

A marriage validly celebrated abroad is generally recognised in India, according to the law of the place where it was celebrated and subject to the usual requirements of capacity and consent. You do not normally “re-marry” in India, and you should be extremely careful of anybody who suggests you do — a second ceremony while a first marriage subsists is not a formality, it is a serious problem.

What you usually need instead is your foreign marriage certificate made usable in India: apostilled or attested in the country that issued it, and translated into English by a recognised translator where it is in another language. That is done at that end, not this one. Indian authorities that then need it — a bank, an insurer, a passport office adding spouse particulars — act on that document.

Where an Indian mission solemnised or registered the marriage under the Foreign Marriage Act, 1969, the certificate comes from the mission and its own procedure applies.

What we will not do: arrange a second Indian wedding for a couple already married abroad in order to produce an Indian certificate, or register in India a marriage we can see took place elsewhere in a way the file does not disclose. One marriage, one record. Two records of the same marriage in two countries is the discrepancy that stops a visa, a green card or an OCI application, and unwinding it is far harder than getting it right once.

The Apostille and Attestation Chain, Step by Step

This is the part that takes the time, and almost nobody plans for it. Work through it in order.

1. The government marriage certificate. Issued after registration by the SDM or the Registrar of Marriages through Delhi e-District. A mandir certificate is not this document, and no foreign authority will act on one. Everything below starts here.
2. Authentication within India. Before the Ministry of External Affairs will apostille or attest a document, it ordinarily has to be authenticated by the designated authority of the state or union territory that issued it — in practice the Home Department, the General Administration Department or an authorised SDM, depending on the state and the document.
3. MEA apostille, or MEA attestation. The Ministry of External Affairs apostilles documents for countries that are party to the Hague Apostille Convention, and attests them for countries that are not. In practice the work is handled through the Ministry’s outsourced centres and Branch Secretariats rather than over a counter in South Block.
4. Embassy attestation, for non-Hague countries only. Where the destination country is not party to the Convention, the document additionally goes to that country’s embassy or consulate in India for attestation after the MEA stage.
5. Translation, where needed, by a recognised translator, with the names spelled exactly as they appear on the passport.

A realistic budget of time for the whole chain, after the wedding: a few working days for the registration, then commonly one to three weeks for authentication and apostille, and a further one to three weeks where an embassy attestation is also needed. Missions and centres have their own queues, and they are the part nobody controls. We will never quote you a guaranteed date for a step that belongs to a government office or a foreign mission, and anybody who does is guessing with your ticket.

Visas, OCI and What Comes After the Certificate

We are a marriage documentation service. We do not file visa applications, we are not immigration consultants, and we take no share of anybody’s fee for that work. What follows is the shape of the thing, so that you plan around it rather than being surprised by it — every detail is decided by the mission or authority concerned, and their published requirements govern.

• A foreign spouse coming to India ordinarily applies to the Indian mission in their own country for the appropriate visa, on the strength of the registered marriage certificate. The category, the duration and the conditions are the mission’s call.
• OCI on the basis of marriage has its own requirement: the marriage must be registered and subsisting for the period prescribed — commonly stated as two years — before the application. This is the single most-cited reason we are told the registration matters, and it is why stopping at a mandir certificate is so expensive.
• An Indian spouse joining a partner abroad goes through that country’s own route — spousal sponsorship, a fiancé(e) visa, a settlement visa, and so on. Those categories have their own evidence requirements about the relationship, well beyond the certificate.
• Every one of them will want the certificate to match everything else. Names, spellings and dates identical across the certificate, both passports, the Aadhaar and any previous decree. See the section on mismatches below — it stops more NRI files than any other single thing.

And the passport point everybody forgets: adding a spouse’s name to an Indian passport, or changing your own name after marriage, is a re-issue — which means a new passport number. If a visa or a travel booking is tied to the old number, sequence it deliberately rather than doing it in the same week you fly. And note that no law requires anybody to change their surname; if you choose to, the order is affidavit, newspaper notices, Gazette of India, then Aadhaar, PAN, bank KYC, employer, and the passport last.

Name and Spelling Mismatches: The Quiet File-Killer

On an NRI file this is not a small problem, it is the problem.

Your Indian documents were created over twenty years by different clerks. Your passport was created once, carefully, and the foreign authority treats it as the truth. So the marriage certificate says “Sunita Devi”, the Aadhaar says “Sunita Rani”, the passport says “Sunita”, and the visa section has to resolve a question you could have resolved in a week for ₹2,500.

How to handle it:

• Decide before the wedding which spelling is correct — for an NRI file that is almost always the passport.
• Tell us that spelling before the certificate is prepared, not after. Getting it right on the day costs nothing.
• Check it at the counter before you leave — both names and their exact spellings, both fathers’ names, the date, the place, both dates of birth. A correction on the spot takes a minute; the same correction from Toronto takes an application, a ₹2,500 fee and somebody’s trip.
• Where an older document cannot be corrected, the usual instrument is a “one and the same person” affidavit, and some authorities also want a supporting document.
• Order several certified copies at once. You will need one for the mission, one for the apostille chain and one for your own file, and getting another from abroad is the slowest thing in this whole process.

Documents, Mapped to a Visitor’s Reality

• Passports for both, and for a foreign national a valid visa and evidence of lawful stay covering the whole period — including the paperwork days after the wedding, not just the wedding.
• Age proof for both. For the India-based partner this is the item most often sitting in a trunk in another state — start it first and courier it. For a foreign national a birth certificate is usual, apostilled or attested in the issuing country.
• Address proof for both. A home-state Indian address proof is perfectly valid; an overseas address on a foreign document is normal.
• Proof of marital status. A no-impediment certificate or certificate of no objection from the foreign national’s embassy or high commission in India is commonly required — each mission has its own form, fee and timeline, and some take weeks. Start with the embassy, not with us.
• Divorce decree or death certificate where either party was married before — and where it is foreign, apostilled or attested and translated. An affidavit is not a substitute for a decree, here or anywhere.
• Passport photographs for both, and two witnesses with their own original identity documents (three for a Special Marriage Act solemnisation).

We do not provide witnesses — not for a fee, not as a favour, and not because you have flown in and know nobody. It is a fixed term of how we work. On a file that a visa section will examine, a paid witness is not a shortcut; it is a weakness you have built in deliberately.

Verifying Who You Are Marrying — and the Help That Exists If It Goes Wrong

We would rather lose a booking than write this page without this section. Cross-border matches are the ones most often built on something untrue, and the person who pays for it is almost always the woman who stays in India.

Before the wedding, verify independently — not through the broker who introduced you:

• Identity and immigration status. Passport and the actual visa or residence document. A photocopy of a PR card proves nothing; ask to see the original and read the dates.
• Marital status. A divorce decree, in original or certified copy, with the case details legible — not an assurance and not an affidavit. If a first marriage was abroad, the decree is a foreign document and should be apostilled or attested.
• Employment and address abroad. An employer letter, a payslip, a utility bill, a lease. Verify one of them yourself.
• Who else has met them. A family that has never met the groom’s family in person, in a match arranged entirely through an agent, is the single most common pattern in the cases that go wrong.

Never do these, whoever asks: hand over the bride’s passport or original documents to the groom’s family; pay dowry or a “settlement” through an agent; sign blank papers or blank stamp paper; or let the marriage be registered in a way the bride has not read and understood. And keep a complete copy of every document and every photograph in the bride’s own possession and in her own email.

If a spouse is deserted after an NRI marriage, help exists and very few people know about it:

• The Ministry of External Affairs runs a scheme, funded through the Indian Community Welfare Fund, for legal and financial assistance to Indian women deserted by their overseas Indian spouses, delivered through Indian missions with empanelled lawyers and NGOs. Approach the Indian mission in the country concerned, or the MEA.
• The National Commission for Women has an NRI cell that takes such complaints.
• Within India, the ordinary remedies — maintenance, a residence order under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, restitution, custody — are available, and they are an advocate’s work. We do not practise law, we do not take a share of anybody’s fee, and we will say so rather than taking money for something we cannot do.
• A registered marriage is what makes every one of those remedies usable. A woman with a mandir certificate and no registration spends her first six months proving she was married at all.

Our guide on verifying a match sets the whole checklist out, and our NRI marriage guide covers the documentation side in more depth than fits here.

A Trip Plan That Actually Works

Written as a countdown, because that is how this has to be thought about.

Fees for NRI Couples

These are the tiers on this page. They do not change because a flight is booked, a visa interview is dated or you called on a Sunday.

Read the tiers honestly before you choose one. The ₹5,100 line is the ceremony only — it does not include the government registration, and an overseas authority will not act on a mandir certificate. If your reason for marrying in India is a visa, an OCI application or anything that will be read abroad, you need registration at minimum, and apostille or attestation on top.

Government charges and third-party charges are separate and shown at cost on your receipt, on their own line, with our charge on another — that includes MEA and embassy fees, courier and translation. We add nothing to them and round nothing up. If your receipt does not let you see where every rupee went, tell us and we will rewrite it. Our full list is on the fees page.

Twelve Mistakes NRI Couples Make

1. Booking a two-week trip for a sixty-day route. If you are an inter-faith couple and neither will convert, the Special Marriage Act needs thirty days’ residence before notice is even given. Plan a different visit.
2. Stopping at the mandir certificate. No embassy, university, employer or immigration authority anywhere acts on it.
3. Leaving the no-impediment certificate to the last week. It is the slowest item and the embassy sets the pace.
4. Ordering the wrong authentication — an apostille where attestation was needed, or the reverse. Ask the receiving authority first.
5. A name spelled differently on the certificate and the passport.
6. Ordering one certified copy. Get several while you are in India.
7. Changing a name and a passport in the same week as flying. A name change is a re-issue and the passport number changes.
8. Registering the same marriage in two countries “to be safe”. It is the discrepancy that stops a visa.
9. Getting foreign documents attested in India instead of in the country that issued them.
10. Handing original documents to an agent, a broker or the other family.
11. Believing an agent who promises a certificate while one party is abroad. There is no proxy marriage in India.
12. Never updating the nominations. EPF, gratuity, insurance and bank nominations do not carry over on marriage, and a nominee is in any case a receiver, not an owner.

Four NRI Situations, and What Happened

Anonymised, and each stands for many.

The couple who planned backwards. He flew from Melbourne with three weeks. They sent documents six weeks ahead, started the Australian high commission’s no-impediment certificate immediately, married in the first week and registered in the second, and ordered four certified copies before he flew. The apostille finished after he had gone and was couriered. Nothing dramatic happened, which was the point.

The one-week trip that failed. An inter-faith couple arrived with eight days and were told by an agent that the Special Marriage Act could be “managed”. It cannot. Thirty days’ residence, then thirty days’ notice, and no fee shortens either. They lost a trip and the agent’s deposit. They came back four months later and did it properly.

The certificate nobody would accept. Married at a mandir in 2019 on a holiday, certificate in a drawer, no registration. Five years later an OCI application on the basis of marriage needed a registered marriage subsisting for the prescribed period. The marriage was real and the years were real; the record was not there. We registered it as an existing marriage — but the clock for the OCI requirement is a question for the authority, not for us, and that is a conversation nobody wants to have five years late.

The one we refused. A family asked whether the groom’s brother could stand in, as the groom’s leave had been cancelled. No. There is no proxy marriage in India, and a certificate produced that way is a document that will be examined by exactly the authority most able to detect it. They rebooked.

What We Will Not Do

• We will not arrange a proxy or power-of-attorney marriage. Both parties attend, in person, always.
• 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, and we decline where a document appears to have been altered.
• We do not marry anybody while an earlier marriage subsists, here or abroad, and an affidavit is not a substitute for a decree.
• We stop if either party is not giving a clear, free yes in their own words — and we speak to both of you alone to find out. A bride who is not permitted to answer for herself is the situation we watch for hardest on cross-border files.
• We do not manufacture a residence to fit a Special Marriage Act notice into a short visit, and we do not back-date anything.
• We do not promise dates that belong to a government office or a foreign mission.
• We are not immigration consultants. We do not file visa, OCI or sponsorship applications and we take no share of anybody’s fee for them.
• We do not practise law. Maintenance, custody, desertion, protection and succession go to an independent advocate acting in their own name.
• We do not discuss your file with anybody — not a family, not an agent, not a caller who says it is urgent.

What Happens When You Contact Us From Abroad

1. You send photographs of your documents on WhatsApp — both passports, the visa or residence document, age proof for the India-based partner, and anything about a previous marriage. Free, and the time difference does not matter.
2. We tell you which route fits your trip, what is missing, and the honest timeline — including when the answer is “this does not fit two weeks” or “start with your embassy, not with us”.
3. You start the embassy’s no-impediment certificate and get foreign documents apostilled or attested at that end.
4. You get a written quote with our charge and the government and third-party charges on separate lines, before anything is paid.
5. We confirm the spelling of both names against the passports before anything is printed.
6. You both attend, with your own witnesses. The ceremony, then the registration, then the certificate checked at the counter.
7. The apostille or attestation chain, with certified copies ordered while you are still here.

Phone and WhatsApp: +91 8376863962. NRI Arya Samaj marriage ₹5,100 · NRI court marriage ₹6,100 · marriage + MEA apostille ₹20,000 · visa-ready with embassy attestation ₹30,000 · tatkal ₹35,000. Government and third-party charges separate and at cost.

This page is general information about the law and the procedure, not legal or immigration advice on your own case. Statutes, rules, fees, apostille membership and mission requirements change, and the authority in front of you applies the current version — confirm with the relevant embassy or high commission, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Delhi e-District portal before you act. We are a marriage documentation and coordination service, not a law firm and not immigration consultants.

NRI Marriage FAQs

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