How to convert civil partnership to marriage by having a 'proper' marriage ceremony?

[CloudsAreLovelyAndFluffy]

Hi All,

Am I right in thinking we can't have a traditional wedding once we are in a civil partnership?

Due to time constraints that I won't go into we're looking to conceive before we are due to get married next summer. We were looking at getting a civil partnership (paperwork without ceremony) now before conception BUT my DW wants a very traditional marriage in her home country. My understanding is that you can't get married if you are already in a civil partnership because you can't be in 2 'marriages' at the same time. We can only convert the civil partnership into a marriage - that's done by filling out a form, so the idea of a traditional wedding ceremony seems impossible? Please does anyone have experience of this? Am I missing something?

Thanks

CALAF

p.s. I can't say I fancy the idea of getting 'divorced' from the civil partnership as a solution! :-)

Why can't you do a marriage here? It can just be paperwork.

Either way you can only have a blessing later on

Ask your fiancée how traditional marriage works in her home country. Who sets the rules, is it the government, the religious authorities, who? You might be worrying about nothing, if she rings up the priest and he says he's still happy to marry you even if you have a civil partnership already.
It's not unheard of - New York is quite happy to take the money to marry couples a second time, provided of course they were married to each other!

@burnoutbabe

Why can't you do a marriage here? It can just be paperwork.

Either way you can only have a blessing later on

Because I’m stealing her from her homeland! It will be very big and be several days long, the idea of just doing paperwork or just having a ‘blessing’ doesn’t satisfy expectations :-)

We can’t answer your question because it depends on the rules of her religion in her home country, and we don’t know what that is. They might be happy to ignore your UK civil partnership, treat you as single people and give you a “proper” wedding ceremony, or they might not.

@InteriorDesignHell

Ask your fiancée how traditional marriage works in her home country. Who sets the rules, is it the government, the religious authorities, who? You might be worrying about nothing, if she rings up the priest and he says he's still happy to marry you even if you have a civil partnership already. It's not unheard of - New York is quite happy to take the money to marry couples a second time, provided of course they were married to each other!

My understanding is that in the UK it’s illegal to be married twice at the same time (even if to the same person), and that legally a civil partnership counts as marriage? Although I’m not sure how UK law perceives marriages in other countries, and how would UK law in practice even find out that I’m ‘married’ twice?

You'll have to name the other country if you want specific advice, otherwise no one can help you.
Or google it?

In the U.K. you can convert it but not oversea has to be here. My advice is to have a civil marriage ceremony here and a religious wedding there minus the paperwork

If she is of African background, you can have a traditional Marriage in her home country and the paperwork wedding here . There is no paperwork involved in a traditional wedding, it is symbolic for her family back home .

Other way round, but I have friends who got married quickly to sort visas in the US and then had a wedding later in the UK. It was a civil service in the UK and if it wasn't for the fact the registrar mentioned it was a blessing, I wouldn't have noticed, as everything else was the same.

Thanks everyone my partner is from Poland. Not looking for a religious wedding but it will be extremely traditional eg when the bride, groom and witnesses sign the marriage register that’s done in front of the congregation and is a big thing. Really don’t want to do anything that would be controversial with the family elders / cause unnecessary stress to my partner.

You need to think about why you'd have a civil partnership here? Why not a marriage?

Both sexes can have marriage now and very few people have cp now, other countries may not even recognise it if you are traveling and fall ill when there (so ignore you for next of kin decisions)

I’m assuming that the OP wants a CP precisely because it’s not a “real” marriage and hence it leaves it open to get married properly under DP’s home country/religion (in that country’s eyes though not in the eyes of the UK Gov) which they couldn’t do if they’d had a UK registry office wedding. But it’s a course of action fraught with legal traps, and they need specialist advice.

@CloudsAreLovelyAndFluffy, English law is English law and Polish law is Polish law.

If you are in an English civil partnership, for all practical purposes you are married except for these differences:

"Civil partners cannot call themselves ‘married’ for legal purposes
A marriage is ended with divorce by obtaining a decree absolute, while a civil partnership is ended with dissolution by obtaining a dissolution order
Adultery is not a valid reason to dissolve a civil partnership, but it can be used to divorce"

Under English law, any second civil partnership/marriage to the same person (without the first being dissolved!) would be invalid, whether the ceremony took place in Poland or not.

But if it took place in Poland then it would be a question of Polish law whether a second legal ceremony was valid. My guess is probably not.

And as an aside, it would perhaps be disrespectful to pretend you were not already legally bound to each other and go through another legal ceremony? I have been to weddings in England and other countries (in churches and otherwise) where the ceremonies had the full wedding regalia and vows/blessings but followed on from an earlier civil (and legal) ceremony. They were great, nobody cared the couple were already married, they were there to celebrate.

OP perhaps wants to get married before the baby is born so it will be a dual national.
A traditional wedding in Poland is by nature religious, surely?
Can you really not get married before the baby is there?