Most articles about getting married abroad are written by wedding bloggers. Soft focus, a paragraph about the light, somebody’s shoes on a beach.
This one was written by a bloke who had a month to do it because an immigration officer told him to, and who spent his wedding night in a different country to his wife.
Why there was a deadline
I’ve written elsewhere about turning up at the Singapore border two hours out of status and being sent back. The short version: we hadn’t got married yet, my ninety days ran out, and the man at the immigration office in Kuala Lumpur — who was a good deal more reasonable than I’d have been — gave me a month to sort it out.
So this isn’t a wedding story. It’s a paperwork story with a wedding in the middle of it.
First: the registry office says no
I walked into the registry office and asked whether you could get married there.
Yes. But first you need a document from a lawyer confirming you’re legally free to marry — that you’re not already married and not promised to anybody else.
That surprised me and then it didn’t. This is a country that takes marriage seriously. Of course they want it in writing.
Then: the bit that nearly cost me a fortune
The woman at the registry office pointed me at a small local law office down the road. She said it would be about fifty ringgit.
I didn’t believe her.
I want to be honest about why, because it’s not flattering. The office looked shabby. And I had it in my head that I was an Englishman being quoted a local price I’d never actually get charged, and that I’d turn up and it would magically become four hundred.
So I went looking online for something that looked more official.
And I found exactly what you’d expect to find. A slick outfit that got back to me on WhatsApp within minutes. Two hundred and fifty ringgit per person. Very keen to tell me that everybody else would charge me through the nose. Very keen to offer me a package — the paperwork, the travel, a photo album, the lot — for a thousand ringgit, and I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.
I nearly took it. It was the reassuring one. It had a proper website.
Instead I went back to the registry office and asked the woman straight out what it should cost. Her answer: you both turn up, you both sign, it’s about fifty ringgit.
The scruffy little office was the honest one. We booked an appointment, went back a few days later, both signed, and it cost a bit more than fifty once they understood exactly what we needed — but nothing like two hundred and fifty each, and a very long way from a thousand.
I had the whole thing backwards. The one that looked professional was the one trying it on. The one that looked like it hadn’t been decorated since the eighties was staffed by people doing an ordinary job at an ordinary price.
If you take one thing from this post: ask the official office what it should cost, before you ask anybody else. They’ll tell you. They’ve got no reason not to.
The dress code nobody mentions
You cannot get married in jeans.
Long-sleeved shirt, trousers, proper leather shoes. That’s the standard, and they mean it.
We had arrived in Malaysia with jeans, t-shirts and shorts, because we’d come to a hot country and we’re not idiots. Every smart thing I owned was in England, or more accurately had been sold in England. So I went and bought an outfit specifically to get married in. My wife bought a dress.
There’s something quite funny about buying leather shoes in thirty-two degrees so that a government office will let you get married.
The witnesses
You need witnesses, and we didn’t know a soul.
A married couple from the church I’d started going to said they’d do it. The only slot the registry office had clashed with their working hours, so they booked the day off work to stand in a room with two people they’d known five minutes and sign a form.
They’re very good friends now. That’s not a coincidence — that’s just what happens when somebody does you a kindness for no reason at all.
The day itself
Married at about nine in the morning. Then roughly two hours of paperwork — statements, signatures, photographs if you want them.
No reception. No party. No first dance. Our witnesses went back to work.
I’m not going to pretend that’s sad, because it wasn’t. But it wasn’t a wedding in the way you’re picturing a wedding. It was an appointment we were extremely glad to get.
And then the ending
Same day, certificate in hand, I went straight to the immigration office.
The officer looked at it and told me what I already half knew. I was married now — but the dependent pass has to go through my wife’s employer, and that takes time. Which meant that at that precise moment, standing there legally married, I still wasn’t supposed to be in the country.
He gave me another few days. Cross the border, stay one night, come back, and your ninety days resets. And take that certificate to the school.
So I got on a coach.
On my wedding night I was in a hotel in Singapore, and my wife was in Kuala Lumpur.
We’d been living together for ages, so nobody was heartbroken. It’s just that of all the nights in a year, that’s the one the paperwork picked.
What I’d tell you
Do it early. If you’re coming to Malaysia as the unmarried partner of somebody with a job here, get married in the first thirty days and start the dependent paperwork straight away. Everything I’ve described in this post was avoidable by doing it in week two instead of week nine.
Ask the official office what things cost. Every time. Before you Google anything.
And take one smart outfit with you, even to a country where you’ll never otherwise wear it.
If you want to know what anything else costs out here, off my own bills rather than guesswork, it’s all on the price page.
