Marrying in France: the mairie owns the ceremony

Service-public's Mariage en France fiche establishes the architecture. Age: you must be of age — at least 18 — to marry, with minors marrying only by exceptional authorisation. Foreign nationals: the fiche's note is the legally interesting one — certain rules of your own nationality may apply, within respect for French ordre public: your national law travels with you into a French marriage file, but France's public-order limits cap what it can require or forbid. The binding ceremony is the civil one at the mairie; religious ceremonies have no civil effect on their own.

Competence follows residence ties — the commune where a spouse (or a parent) has the required connection — and the file runs through that mairie's état-civil office.

Source: Service-public.fr, F930 — mariage en France, read 6 September 2026.

The mairie's file for a foreign spouse typically stacks: birth certificate (recent issue, apostilled and sworn-translated), proof of identity and of the residence tie, certificates of celibacy or capacity where the home country issues them, and the audition the mairie may conduct. Timelines are commune-dependent; the banns publication adds its fixed days. None of it is difficult; all of it is sequential — which is why couples start the file months before the date.

Marriage also touches the immigration file: a spouse of a French citizen or EU resident enters different residence routes, each with its own insurance logic — the hubs carry the rules.

The livret de famille arrives, the marriage certificate enters every future dossier, and — for mixed-nationality couples — the home country usually wants its own registration of the French marriage. The moving checklist holds the civil-papers sequence; the cover question belongs to whichever residence route the marriage opens:

Print the moving checklist