How to get a marriage license in the United States

Getting the license is the legal step that unlocks the ceremony. It is a short errand, but it sits between two deadlines that move in opposite directions: a waiting period that stops you marrying too soon, and an expiry date that stops you applying too early. Both are set by state law, and neither bends for a booked venue.

What follows covers where you apply, how the timings stack up, what happens at the counter, and what the county does with the license afterwards. The paperwork you take with you is set out under marriage license requirements, and the charges under courthouse wedding costs.

You apply at a county clerk in the state where the ceremony will take place. The office is named differently depending on where you are: county clerk in most of the country, town or city clerk across New England, circuit court clerk, probate judge or register of deeds elsewhere. The function is identical, and the state statute behind it is what actually sets the rules.

Residency is not one of them. No state requires either of you to live there in order to marry there, which is why destination weddings inside the United States are administratively simple and why Las Vegas built an industry on it. What you cannot do is bring a license with you: the license is a state document, issued under the law of that state, and it is void outside it. Move the wedding from one state to a neighbouring one and you start again at a new counter.

Within the issuing state the license is normally good in any county, so applying near your hotel and marrying two hours away is usually fine. A minority of states tie the ceremony to the county that issued the license, and some counties add conditions of their own. This is the single item worth confirming in writing before you book travel, because it is where states genuinely diverge and where a wrong assumption is expensive.

One more difference from systems built on notice: nothing about your application is posted publicly in advance, and no waiting list of intentions exists. In most states the completed marriage record does become a public record afterwards, which is a separate matter and matters to some couples more than others.

Two state-set numbers frame the whole exercise. The first is the waiting period between issue and ceremony, which runs from none at all in much of the country to roughly six days in the states that impose one, and is frequently waivable by a judge or by completing an approved premarital course. The second is how long the license stays valid, most often somewhere between thirty and ninety days, shorter in a few states and as long as a year in others.

Together they open a window. Apply before it and the license lapses; apply inside it but too close to the day and a waiting period can catch you. Because both figures are state law, treat the table below as the shape of the timeline rather than the timeline itself, and take the two numbers off your own clerk page.

The practical advice sits between the extremes: apply two to three weeks before the wedding in a state with a long validity window, and as early as the window allows in a state with a short one. That is early enough to fix a document problem without panic and late enough that the license cannot expire underneath you. Once the date and place are fixed you can tell your guests, and many couples keep the time, address and travel details in one place on a wedding website rather than repeating them in messages for months.

Both of you attend in almost every state. Some counties take walk-ins, others run on appointments, and a growing number let you complete the application online and then appear together to sign and collect. Expect the visit itself to take well under an hour once you reach the front.

The clerk checks identification, records the details of both of you, and in most states records your Social Security numbers. Many application forms also ask for your parents names and birthplaces, which is worth knowing in advance if a parent used a different surname or was born abroad. You then swear or affirm that the information is true and that there is no legal impediment to the marriage, and you sign. That signature is given under penalty of perjury, so accuracy matters more than speed: check the spelling of every name before you sign, because correcting a recorded marriage afterwards is a formal process rather than a phone call.

Bring what the county asks for, in the form it asks for. Current government photo identification is universal. Where a previous marriage has ended, some counties want the certified divorce decree or death certificate and others take the date and place from the form. Documents in another language will usually need a certified translation, so check that when you read the page rather than on the day. The fee is paid at the counter, and a surprising number of offices are cash only.

What does not happen is as informative as what does. There is no publicly displayed notice, no objection period, no interview about the sincerity of the relationship, and no referral to an immigration authority. Immigration status is not a condition of a marriage license anywhere in the country, and a foreign passport is normally accepted as identification. What the marriage sets in motion afterwards is a different question, covered under marrying a non-citizen.

You leave the counter holding the license, and you are not married. The license is a permission with a deadline on it. What converts it into a marriage is the ceremony, and what converts the ceremony into a record is the signing and filing that follows.

At the end of the ceremony the license is signed: by the two of you, by the officiant, and by however many witnesses the state requires. That number is not the same everywhere. Some states require two, some one, and a few none at all, so the answer has to come from the state you are marrying in rather than from the last wedding you attended. What witnesses have to be able to do, and who may serve, is covered under do you need witnesses to get married.

The officiant then returns the signed license to the county that issued it, within a deadline printed on the document and set by the state. This is the officiant duty, not yours, and it is the step most often left dangling when a friend has been ordained online for the occasion. Ask, in advance, who is walking it back to the clerk and when. Once the county records it, the marriage enters the public record and certified copies can be ordered.

The consequence surprises almost everyone marrying for the first time: you do not leave your wedding holding a marriage certificate. The certificate is produced by the county recorder or the state vital records office after the license has been filed and recorded, and you order copies then. How many to order and where to order them is covered under getting your marriage certificate.

Because marriage is state law, the United States runs several parallel versions of the same errand, and one of them may fit you better than the default.

A small number of states allow a couple to solemnize their own marriage with no officiant at all. Colorado and Pennsylvania are the ones most often named, and several other states permit it specifically for religious societies that marry without a minister, such as Friends meetings. Where it is available, the couple signs the license themselves and files it, and the ceremony can be whatever the two of you want it to be, including nothing at all. For an elopement this removes the last scheduling dependency, which is why it appears so often in our guide to eloping.

California offers a second variation worth knowing: alongside the ordinary public license it issues a confidential marriage license, which is not open to public inspection and does not require a witness at the ceremony. Couples who do not want their marriage record searchable, and couples who genuinely want no one else present, use it for exactly those reasons.

Several states also let someone be authorized to officiate for one day only. Massachusetts issues a one-day marriage designation, and California counties can deputize a Deputy Commissioner of Civil Marriages for a single ceremony. Both give a friend or relative real legal authority without ordination, and both take lead time and a form.

That leaves the most common route of all: a friend ordained online. It is accepted across most of the country, but a handful of states and individual counties have questioned whether an online ministry qualifies, and the answer that matters comes from the county that will record your license rather than from the body that issued the ordination. Confirm it before the invitations go out. Who may officiate, and what to ask them, is set out under choosing a wedding officiant.