Hello everyone..

I have just joined this forum, as I am planning to get married to my fiance in the Philippines towards the end of September this year (2011) and have been searching in various places to try and find the various requirements for this to happen.

I met my fiance in the UK in October 2008 while she was here on a student visa, but that has now ran out and she went back to the Philippines, Quezon City, a few weeks ago.

We have decided that we will get married in the Philippines, so that she can then apply to come back to the UK on a spouse visa.

I have applied for my CNI last week, which should be sent to me on 10th August (after the 21 days posting) and am now planning to fly to the Philippines on 28th August. We will then go to the British Embassy in Manilla on the 31st August (the first available day after arriving due to bank holidays), so that I can get my CNI localised / legalised. Then once we have that we will apply for our marriage license.

My main concern / query is that I can only get 4 weeks holiday, so by the time we get our marriage license we will only have about a week and a half to actually get married. I am worried that after we have received our marriage license, we will not be able to find a venue or judge/solemnizing officer in time before i have to return to the UK.

Can anyone help with advice on whether we can book a venue/judge in advance before we have been issued a marriage license? Or how quickly we should be able to find somewhere once we have been issued our license if it is not possible before.

We are just looking to have a small civil wedding in Quezon City and then we will maybe have a party in the UK when we are here together again.

The other alternative we have been considering is to get married in Boracay. If we were to do this, we would also then invite some close family and friends as well. We would then need to be able to book this in advance as well, so that the guests can make arrangements to go there. Is this something that could be possible?

Thanks in advance for any help, I would appreciate your thoughts!

Thanks again,

Jon