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I am an Indian national, my wife to be is a Turkish national but was born in Germany and has a permanent residence permit, she can apply for German citizenship anytime but doesn't see any benefit although she would consider it if it makes the marriage process easier. I am in Germany on a student visa, i have been here only 6 months now and managed to convince my spouse's parents to give their blessings for the marriage which took a lot of effort and patience but that's another story.

My question is can i get married in Germany while i am on a student visa and completing my masters degree. My gf is doing her bachelor's degree at the same university. Or do i have to wait till i finish my studies and then go back to India and apply for a marriage visa. What would be the best course of action, any ideas or suggestions would be very welcome.

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I don't know exactly. We were never asked for my (now) wife's Visa during the whole process, so I figure as long as you are here legally, you should be fine.

However, marrying in Germany takes a lot of paperwork. You will need to present papers like your birth certificate and if you are not from Germany, you will need an apostille for each paper and then you will need a certified translation to German for both the original paperwork and the apostille.

If you talk to Germans, marrying seems easy, because the administrative offices are all interconnected, so getting a German's birth certificate is a matter of a computer query for the clerk. Getting them to recognize a foreign certificate is a long, costly and tedious process.

Marrying costs a fraction of your income (I think it was around 100€ for us and we both worked full time so that's nothing really, a student couple will probably pay some minimum handling fee) but getting those documents and translations is expensive. I think we paid more than 4000€ on that. Obviously that's paying private companies and so it's free market, you might be able to find a cheaper translator or are okay with waiting longer for the regular bureaucracy of your country instead of doing it by express delivery.

Make an appointment at the Standesamt. They will tell you what they want you to bring. Take good notes and bring a translator if your German is so-so. They are just clerks, sometimes they forget things or misrepresent things because they don't know better themselves. I'm sure some are really good, but I can attest that there are really bad one's too.

So make an appointment and take a list what you need to do to get married. Be prepared for a long and costly list. I'm not sure if type of Visa will be on there, but I'm sure it will be the point that in the end will be easiest to fulfill.

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I'm not a lawyer, but here are my 2 cents:

1) IMHO, marriage does not depend too much on your visa / residence permit. If you want to have a marriage, it should be possible. If in Germany it is too complicated, you can probably do it in another country (Denmark? Turkey? India? Embassy?) and later recognise (strictly speaking, in some cases an official recognition might be not necessary, one can just show the translated foreign marriage certificate to the Bürgerservice or something like that) it in Germany.

2) For changing the type of residence permit due to marriage, I'm not sure. Probably, it should be possible, see pages 29-30 of https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/EMN/Studien/wp67-emn-wechsel-aufenthaltstiteln-aufenthaltszwecken.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=19

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  • The last part of 1) is bad advice. Both being foriegner residents , the process of get such a marriage reconised is basicly the same as getting married in Germany - so why bother? German citizens, residing in Germany must get married in Germany. To 2) without recognition of the marriage, they would still be considered not married - so there would be nothing to change.
    – Mark Johnson
    Jan 8, 2020 at 12:10
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    @Mark Johnson, the question states that both are not German citizens. In my case, no recognition was necessary (I just showed the foreign marriage certificate with apostile on it in the Bürgeramt). Besides this, I have never heard that German citizens residing in Germany must get married in Germany, can you provide a proof for it?
    – Andrey Sapegin
    Jan 8, 2020 at 12:20
  • Unfortunately I did not add a source to my answer, so I will try to find it later (and add it later). expatriates.stackexchange.com/a/17336/17166 Where you both residents in Germany at the time of your marriage outside of Germany?
    – Mark Johnson
    Jan 8, 2020 at 12:57
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    @MarkJohnson more than one site describes the paperwork necessary for German residents to register a Las Vegas marriage certificate after returning home from their wedding. I can't imagine that these sites would fail to mention that this advice is useless to German citizens. It's rather more likely that no such restriction exists.
    – phoog
    Jan 11, 2020 at 7:23
  • @phoog see comment at linked answer.
    – Mark Johnson
    Jan 11, 2020 at 7:49

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