Marriage in Ecuador as a foreigner

My info is very old (2006). But to get married, just passport with tourist visa.

Getting the visa to stay (resident / citizen) was more involved, but mostly formalities and nothing like the hassle it was for getting the wife a UK visa (or I assume a US one).

Just get your fiance to sort it all out as am sure will be easier for her to call to agencies, speak to people and find out (assuming her Spanish is better than yours)

Haha! I am actually a woman.... the person in Ecuador is a man.

I did wind up finding the information on the ecuador embassy or whatever it is website. They no longer accept a regular T3 visa. It has to be an extended one. Blah.

I got married in Guayaquil in May 2019 to a Guayaquileña.

I can't express how important it is to follow the instructions exactly.

We wasted a lot of time because we confused the paperwork with residency and the paperwork for marriage. In addition, we failed to anticipate how long it takes to get all the appointments. That caused me a lot of anxiety because the time was ticking on my tourist extension (prórroga).

Remember that marriage and residency are totally separate processes.

It took us about 60 days from our first visit to the civil registry till wedding day.

The embassy website mentions the "affidavit of marriage" as if it is an afterthought. The civil registry wouldn't even book our civil marriage appointment without it, so this forced a return trip.

+ The civil registry has additional requirements besides what I quote from the embassy.

I seem to remember that I needed to make several color copies of my passport too, in addition to the documents listed below.

The consulate in Guayaquil only does the notarization appointments one day a week and may be full 4 weeks in advance, so do nothing last minute!

The security screening is quite slow so arrive at the consulate/embassy one hour before your appointment. If you miss the appointment, you have to start all over and it could take several weeks to get another appointment. I say this because I got to my appointment with only 5 minutes to spare and I arrived to the consulate 1 hour early.

Study this page: https://ec.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-se … d-divorce/

Quoting the US Embassy:

Marriage in Ecuador
If you would like to get married in Ecuador, we advise you to review the requirements on the Ecuadorian Civil Registry for the latest information.

A foreigner may get married in Ecuador but some additional documentation may be required by local authorities, we recommend you have the following handy:

Birth Certificate (apostilled and translated)
Previous Marriage Certificates (apostilled and translated)
Divorce Decrees  or Death Certificates (apostilled and translated)

In most cases when getting married in Ecuador, the Civil Registry asks for a sworn statement stating the marital status of the foreign spouse and his or her citizenship.
This document is called an *“Affidavit of Marriage”*
-it must be completed in Spanish
- notarized only at the U.S. Embassy/Consulate
- please keep in mind that this document has a validity of 30 days only.

To complete this requirement you can:

Download the form and fill it out (filled in from questions 1 to 7, no corrections are allowed) (PDF 17kb)
Schedule an appointment online for a notarial service at the U.S. Embassy in Quito or at the U.S. Consulate in Guayaquil.
We strongly suggest you visit the Civil Registry to make sure you have all the documentation required before scheduling an appointment for the Affidavit of Marriage

When you come to the appointment please make sure you bring the following:

Valid current U.S. Passport.
An additional photo ID (cédula, driver’s license, etc.) to leave with the guards.

Affidavit of Marriage: Form must be typed and not handwritten. The form must be filled out completely in Spanish and corrections on the form will not be accepted (PDF 17k)(this document must be signed in front of the Consular Officer).

If the document is rejected at the Ecuadorian Civil Registry due to misspellings or erroneous information, the applicant will have to schedule a new appointment and pay a new fee.
Fee for this service is $50 you can pay cash or credit card.
If you are divorced you must bring your divorce decree/certificate

Thanks a bunch!

USluvsEC wrote:

Haha! I am actually a woman.... the person in Ecuador is a man.
.

oops, my apologies for my assumptions.

But either way, it will be much easier for him to call up, find out, speak to friends / family about the process, assuming his spanish is better than yours.

Congratulations and best of luck with the process. It sounds a lot more involved now than it was from what @lebowski888 says.

My now wife, organised everything in less than 4 weeks. I just turned up for the wedding, then to the office for some paper signing the next day. But this was in village so perhaps less formal than the city like Guayaquil.

When got citizenship, my tourist visa had finished about a year ago and technically wasn't even in the country. Again, sounds like things are a bit more robust now