We’re diving into a whirlwind of love and laughter as we spill the beans on getting hitched in Georgia! Spoiler alert: it’s way easier than you’d think. Join us as we chat about our own wedding adventure, which we somehow pulled off in just four days—yup, you heard that right! We’ll dish out all the juicy details about the paperwork, the witnesses, and yes, the dance party that capped off our ceremony. Plus, we'll throw in some tips and tricks for anyone thinking of tying the knot here, whether you're planning a big bash or a sneaky elopement. Buckle up, it’s going to be a fun ride!

In this episode, Meg and Tom reminisce about the time they decided to have a destination wedding in Tbilisi....with only 4 days to plan it!!!

They also discuss how you too can get married in Georgia:

• What are the paperwork requirements
• What to expect from a Georgian wedding ceremony
• and more....

Mentions:

Fabulous wedding photographer: https://www.instagram.com/ioseb_mamniashvili_photography/

Full article on Food Fun Travel: https://foodfuntravel.com/how-to-get-married-in-georgia-georgian-wedding-tbilisi/

Tbilisi Free Walking Tours: https://tbilisifreewalkingtours.com

Takeaways:

• Getting married in Georgia is surprisingly simple and can even be done in just four days, which is like, whoa, right?
• We had a wild wedding adventure, from a neon wedding sign to dancing at our ceremony, which totally caught us off guard!
• Don’t forget your documents! You need a bunch of papers and two witnesses to tie the knot in Georgia, so be prepared, people!
• If you're planning a wedding in Georgia, Sighnaghi is the city of love and offers picturesque views and a lovely chapel experience.
• Remember, your wedding ceremony is in Georgian, so having a local witness to translate is super helpful, unless you want to wing it!
• We learned that getting legally married and having a fun celebration afterward can be totally separate, which is a game-changer!

gamarjoba. This is the Tbilisi podcast covering life, travel and more in the country of Georgia.

Brought to you by foodfuntravel.com, expathub.ge and eat this tours.com in this episode we are talking about getting married in Georgia. We discuss our wedding and what we did on our special day.

And also we get into some of the legal stuff of what paperwork you need witness and all of that happy little stuff you need to be officially married. All right. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Tbilisi Podcast, a show about life and travel in Tbilisi and Georgia.

I am your host, Meg. I run a website called foodfuntravel.com and with me is my husband, Tom. Hi, Tom.

Hi.

What do you do?

Good question. Sometimes I, you know, dream about having a good night's sleep with a two year old screaming every night.

Sometimes I scared.

Nah, he's not that bad at all. Yeah, yeah. I'm a sleepy person who hasn't had enough sleep recently.

I know it's hard with a toddler.

That's mainly what I do, is be a bit tired all the time. But apart from that, that's also what.

It is to be 40, you know, 40ish.

Shut up.

40Ish.

I don't want to hear that.

Sorry.

I do not want to hear that.

I don't know. I'm not 40.

No. All right. So the second you turn 40, you're just tired.

I'm going to be exhausted. Yeah.

All right, good to know. So it's Tom from Experub GE and eatthistours.com Food and wine tours in Georgia. Come and take one of those. It's fun. There you go.

I got a little plug in right at the start.

Look at you with your plugables.

They're fun. They're really fun.

They are fun tours. We're going to go on a tour tomorrow.

We are. We're heading out to Karkedi tomorrow to go have a Supra and we're working on a tasting menu at the moment.

Actually, this is a nice little announcement to slip in there starting this season, as far as we're aware, this might be the first proper wine pairing tasting menu in Karketti region ever. I know they've done some in Tbilisi, but I don't know if they've. I've never found one in Karketti before.

You mean we can go to Karketti and have food and wine?

Well, you can do that already, but this time you can have it in the form of A tasting menu with wine pairings that are designed to actually match with the dishes that you're eating. And very excited to be starting working on that this month.

And then hopefully by spring, it's all going to be finished and we'll be serving our guests that special tasting menu when we take them out on tours.

Actually, it's quite podcast appropriate because the particular place you're mentioning, which we're going to keep a little secret.

It's a secret.

It's a little secret. But it is a great place to get married.

It is. It's a wedding venue. We've been there to friends weddings. They've got a nice pool at the back of the. Of the winery of the main building.

Don't discuss the pool. Don't discuss the pool. No.

Meg had a little bit too much to drink at the wedding and went swimming fully clothed when that was not meant to be. That was like one of the things they said. They were like, don't go swimming fully clothed. Oops, sorry.

And then you lost your shoes.

I love those shoes. And I only came back with one.

So yesterday. We're talking about weddings.

We are.

We're not particularly talking about tasting menus. No, no.

We are talking about weddings and how to get married in Georgia. This is actually a reasonably common question. I wrote an article about it a couple of years ago because Tom and I did get married here in Georgia.

So we've got an article on it. And so I do get emails every now and then from little Lovebir, who also want to get married in Georgia.

So we thought we'd turn it into a podcast if anyone wants to listen to it and find out about how you can actually get married here. Because we were very surprised at how easy it is. More so I was more surprised at how difficult it is to get married everywhere else. Why?

Why? What was it?

I think we looked at Greece and it was something like you had to put a letter in the basement of the local administrative authority that said, we intend to get married. And then you have to wait for like a month for people to complain that they don't want you to get married.

And the aliens are coming through and they're gonna demolish that.

Yeah. And they're gonna demolish the planet anyway. So. Yeah. Yeah. Hitchhiker's Guide reference there for anyone who's got no idea what I'm talking about.

But what I am talking about that is true, is that in whichever country it was, whether it was Greece or Montenegro or something, you had to put.

A notice of Pending nuptials in the church newsletter or something.

Yeah. And people could then complain if they're like, well, I don't want them getting married.

It was crazy good.

Have a just reason, I'm sure. But yeah.

So basically, if you're looking for an elopement, most countries are really not practical for that. You have to have at least I would say a minimum of three months planning to elope. And that kind of negates the purpose of an elopement.

I think it is somewhat non spontaneous when you have to file a whole bunch of paperwork and send letters out to the local community about your plans. Yeah. People are going to know what's going on and the surprise is going to be lost.

So of course, if you want to get married very quickly, there are a few places to do it around the world. We're not talking about that today, we're just talking about Georgia.

But if you want a shotgun wedding and you want to get married in less than 24 hours, it is technically possible here. It can be done.

So, yes, we did elope. We did it in four days. Shall we. Shall we do a little brief outline of our marriage story?

Sure. Let's do the elopement story. Why not?

All right. Who's going to do it?

We should probably, you know, combine it.

Combine. Okay.

Work on it together as a team. We are married after all.

So let's have storytime. Music, set the scene.

Romantic wedding story time. Yeah.

Tom, where were we?

All right, let's. I don't want to bore the hell out of everybody.

No, no, let's keep it.

This is a practical episode. Just to give you an idea of how easy it was for us to.

Get married here we realized that we were in wavre.

In wauv. Yes. So we were on a walking tour. This was long before I started a tour company here. This is our second visit to Georgia.

Another little plug of all Tbilisi free walking tours.

Yeah, those guys are great.

They're wonderful.

Yeah.

Actually, he's going to make a reappearance in this story.

Yeah.

So we were on this walking tour and we were getting close to the end of the walking tour and the guide said, Levain, the guide, he said, well, so we've got two options. Either we can go and see these sort of old 19th century buildings or we can walk the other way and see this super modern mushroom shaped building.

Back in those days we were like, we don't know what the mushroom building is. Okay, right, sure. Let's go do it.

If you listen to other episodes of this show, you might already know what the mushroom building is, especially if you live here.

So we walked through the park to the mushroom building and it turns out this is the public service hall, something that we do talk about a lot because it comes up in anything bureaucratic. You need to go to this public service hall.

Indeed.

We went inside and there was this sort of neon, one of those moving neon letters, like LED letters that scroll across and in bright red letters it said, wedding registrations here, wedding certificates here. We sort of both looked up at that, but we didn't acknowledge it to each other at the time.

But we both looked at it and we were like, that's interesting. And then we went out for some post drinks after the tour and had a sit down and had a bit of a chat.

And because we'd sort of been considering getting married at some point anyway, we sort of said, well, hang on, we're here for another week or two. And it just said that we.

Oh, we were here for another week.

You were there for a week? Yeah, we were only here for another week at that point. Right.

We've already been here for like, it was the end of the year.

Yeah, we'd been here for like four or five weeks already. Yeah. And we went, well, maybe we should actually find out what it does take to get married here. Because that, that neon sign made it sound very easy.

And I always trust neon LED signs. I like, yes, if it's on a sign, it's got to be easy. So let's do that. So, yeah, we had a few drinks and decided, well, let's get married this week.

Why not? If we can. Let's see if we can do it.

Because getting married in Greece, we haven't got time to write letters to the local minister and have it put in the newsletter. So we're like, well, let's try it here. It's going to be easier, isn't it? And it was. We then found out the rules.

We went down to the PSH and asked them what was going on and they said, no.

I didn't even go down.

No. You didn't even go down?

No, no, I just messaged them.

You literally sent them a text message?

But the PSH is pretty decent with their information. They don't have all the information, but they have some information at least on.

On the website with most things so, yeah, no, I think I looked on the website and then I messaged them and they were very. They were quite responsive, so.

Oh, yeah, and they told us some prices and bits and whatever else. And yeah, we went in like the day after that or so.

Like as soon as we had that information, pretty much, I think we went in the Monday afternoon or the Tuesday morning at the very latest.

The documents were on Sunday because the PSH was closed.

Yeah. So we couldn't do anything.

Then the Monday we went in.

Yeah.

With our documents and stuff.

We sat down with the lady there and she was like, you want to get married now? And we're like, well, you mean now at this desk in a service hall surrounded by other people doing bureaucracy. Yeah.

With the beautiful background sounds of staplers and tap. Tap taps on the printers. And printers. That's the soundtrack to my wedding that I had always dreamed of.

So we said, well, hang on. We heard there was a wedding chapel and maybe that would be a nicer option than us getting married at the desk.

But she pretty much said, you can get married at this desk. Which is still true. You can, you can walk in and get married at the desk. Not necessarily on the spot. You need to give them all your documents.

They need to approve a few things and get a few I's dotted and T's crossed and whatever else they do in the background. But you can get married pretty much on the spot or within a few hours if you want to. If you've got all your documents done.

Properly and in order.

Yeah, yeah, if everything's sorted. So, yeah, we said, well, no, hang on, let's just book something tomorrow, next day. Which day do you want? Okay, okay.

We only just decided to get married yesterday. Do we have to rush into this that quickly? We've got to like buy a wedding dress and all of these other bits and pieces.

You know, we got to actually find some guests to come to our wedding.

Yeah.

So it was. It was a thing. And so they said, all right, well, okay, what do you want to do? All right, let's do Friday afternoon. Let's book that in.

So we booked that in at the time, this was a while ago. I think the total cost was like 35 jell.

So about 12, $15 for the session in the wedding chapel and a glass of champagne for the bride and groom and the two witnesses.

I'm surprised. We didn't know. We were.

We didn't know that that was a.

Nice surprise, but that's what we got. Yeah.

So we were like, okay, we've booked our wedding for Friday. That was a surprise. We only decided to get married yesterday, so, you know, booked it in for Friday sounds quite good.

So let's go out for some more celebration that we've got it booked in. We went to a local meetup with some foreigners and we met a few people there and we were like, we are getting married tomorrow.

You seem nice. Want to come to my wedding?

We don't know anybody.

Weird, creepy way.

Yeah. So if you'd like to come to a wedding on Friday, wear something nice.

We're going to get married and then we're going to take you out for a big old lunch and have some fun. And yeah, we got like nine people to sign up and come to our wedding. Yeah, just like that.

I'm still friends with all of them on Facebook.

Yeah. So then we've, of course, part of this. We found out that we needed two witnesses. We needed two people who would come and sign as our witnesses.

And at the time, it appeared that it had to be a Georgian. Georgian people. Georgian residence. People have a residence ID card here. But now it seems like anyone can do it internationally.

If you are here and you've got your passport, you can be a witness legally here. That's the new. Yeah. If you're legally in the country with a visa stamp or an entry stamp. And we'll talk about all those details.

We'll talk about all the, like, the finer details as we get on.

But this is the story of love.

So we went, well, okay, we met some foreigners last night who are now coming to our wedding, but we don't have any locals who have a local ID card. So what are we going to do? So we messaged the tour guide from the walking tours, Levan, and we said, we really need someone to witness our wedding.

And we were on your tour when we essentially decided to get married. So do you think you'd want to do it? And he agreed.

He loved it.

Yeah. And we were like, do you know anyone else? Because we literally just got here a couple of weeks ago and we don't know anyone.

And so he got one of his other tour guides to come down, Tamar, and they both became our witnesses.

And Tamar, this was not the first tour that we'd done with Tibbulla Sifri walking tours. We'd actually, unbeknownst to Levan like a week before, had done behind the behind the scenes walking tour with Tamar.

So when she showed up, we were like, hey. And so it was actually quite nice that, yeah, we'd already met Tamar, she'd been our guide on another tour, and then Levin.

And she brought me a bouquet of flowers because apparently it's the responsibility of the bridesmaid to bring the. The bouquet. So she brought me a little bouquet of flowers, which was so sweet.

There we go. And so, yeah, we got all that organized.

We got all our paperwork done, which we'll talk about later, because that's really boring, but very, very, very important. And then we bought all our clothes and we went and got everything else we needed. We went and found rings.

We actually bought our wings. Our rings.

Our wings. Our wing got our wings. We didn't get wings. We got.

I'm still in, you know, the. I'm still in the Bishop's mode from Princess Bride. We bought our rings at the Drybridge market.

So for those of you who live here and have visited the Drybridge Market, it's quite a quirky little mishmash of.

Memorabilia and some antique bits.

Antique bits and plastic crap and, you know, a little bit of everything in between.

But we didn't get plastic rings.

Beautiful rings there. I even get. We both get compliments on them to this day. It was just. But, yeah, we just walked through there and just found.

Happened to find the most perfect rings. It was.

It's right next to the public service hall, the market as well. So, yeah, like antiques.

And I think we dropped off stuff people were trying to sell and then walked through there.

Yeah, we just went straight there because it was like right next to the. To the service hall. Yeah. So we got everything that we needed to get done. We got all that sorted. We got things booked in.

We turned up to the wedding chapel on Friday morning with everybody else, and the ceremony was very straightforward. It was in Georgian, so it will always be in Georgian, of course.

So, of course it was very handy to have a local witness who could then translate for us, because if we hadn't had that, then it would have been maybe a bit awkward to figure out everything that was going on. Yeah, yeah. Did we actually get married or did we just open a business? I mean, we don't know. It could have been complicated.

I mean, they were dressed up for a wedding, so I guess we weren't opening a business.

But, you know, it was a chapel.

It was a chapel, so probably. I mean, it could be a chapel to business. Some people get very passionate about that stuff.

Crazy countries, business negotiations and ceremonies. Who knows?

Yeah, we don't know. So, yeah, we did that. We did the vows. It's about, like, A five minute. Well, they had an option of a shorter or longer ceremony. We had like, the.

Choose the length of ceremony you would like.

We had the slightly less short because I think the really short one is pretty much.

Do you.

Do you. Yeah. All right, you're married.

I think we chose the 10 minute ceremony.

We chose the 10 minute one. So that was a nice amount of vowels and. And they said some nice things and we did our bits as well. So then the. You're the rings and all that stuff.

And then a little bit of a surprise. I don't know if I want to ruin the surprise for everybody in case they come here and do it or, you know, maybe I will ruin the surprise.

People want to prepare for this.

People might want to prepare because we were not prepared.

We were not.

So they got to the end, and then Levan turns to us and says, so now you know what happens. You dance.

Now we what?

He's like, to finish the ceremony, you dance. That's what she just said. That's what she told me to tell you. Like, you have to dance. That's how you finish the ceremony. It's Georgia.

Dancing is very traditional.

Yeah, we're like, oh, no, no, we're good, we're good.

But like, we haven't. We didn't prepare anything.

It's like, as. So basically in most other cultures, it'll be like, okay, now you kiss the bride.

And we did do that part, but the now you dance thing seemed to me like this was more important then the kiss the bride part.

Yeah. So they're like, well, you know, we can't really sign the paperwork until you've danced, so you better choose something. Just chop.

So we very randomly chose some salsa music.

Well, we had been living in Mexico.

Just come out of Mexico.

We just left 18 months living in Mexico, where we had been taking salsa classes.

So the first salsa song that came up in the playlist was what's his name, Louis Iglesias version of how am I supposed to live without you by Michael Bolton. Now, if you've heard the Michael Bolton version, which we can't play due to copyright reasons, you know how it goes if you're of that age.

If not, just Spotify it, whatever. But this was a Spanish version, which is way more fun. Way more fun. I love me some Bolton, but this version is super fun. Very.

Maybe not as appropriate for a wedding as we would have liked. How am I supposed to live without you now that you've been.

Definitely, definitely a.

It was the first thing that came up and we were like, just flustered it on the spot.

Yeah. But we're like.

But it's all in Spanish, so everybody there didn't actually know what was being sung. Yeah, Lots and lots of people choose inappropriate songs to dance to. Tom used to work as a musician and he's done a few weddings in his time.

Tom, most inappropriate song people have done. First Dances to go.

That one by the Stylistics. My God, I'm throwing myself back, like 15 years here at this point. You're the best thing that ever happened to me.

I think it's the Stylistics or something. But the lyrics to that. You might have heard that you're the best thing that ever happened. That song.

It seems like it's a really nice song about, wow, it's so great to be with you. It's actually a song about settling with someone who's. I couldn't really get anyone better than you, so you'll do. It's really.

When you actually read all the verses and everything, that's what the song's about.

Eric Clapton's Way youy Look Tonight is a classic.

Wonderful tonight A wonderful tonight Wonderful Tonight is about cheating on. With George Harrison's wife.

Yeah. Yeah, he's. Well, he's at least lusting over Mrs. Harrison.

Yeah, yeah, it's a cheating song. So, you know, these sorts of things are great. You should look this up before you choose a song for your wedding.

Or maybe people did what we did and we just got. We got squeezed into choosing a song at the last minute. But I think most people plan their wedding song.

But anyway, we had to dance, we danced salsa, it was fun. They gave us champagne. We didn't know we were getting that. I mean, like sparkling wine. Anyway, and then we went out for a big old meal.

And then we went out and did a load of photography with our fantastic photographer who took us around Tbilisi, and we got lots of great photos. Yeah, that was our wedding. It was awesome.

It was a really great day for something that we planned in four days and didn't expect that we would be doing. It was really. Yeah, it sounds really rushed and really hectic and crazy, but it was really special.

And the fact that we didn't know any of the guests that we invited, they really made an effort to make our day special, really special for us. There was no agendas or anything else like that. I think you hear a lot of stories about weddings and.

And there's always someone who wants to steal the. The limelight because they've got.

I don't know, they're just drunk uncle.

There's some drunk uncle or there's some Dr. Or something like that. Having a bunch of strangers at your wedding. They all just wanted the best for us and wanted us to have a lovely day.

And we really did. It was spectacular to the point where we realized that we'd gone through the entire day.

We went and got our photos, and then we met up with everybody else back at Fabrica, and we were all just having drinks and having a good time, and we realized that I hadn't thrown my bouquet yet. And Levin gets up on the table and literally shouts to the entire crowd at Fabrica. And Fabrica is a really.

If you haven't been here, it's a really popular place for people to go. It was a Friday night pre covered.

So there was hundreds of people in the yard.

Literally shouted to the entire crowd, you know, does anybody want her to throw her bouquet? And everyone's like, yeah. And so I get dragged up on the table and there's this countdown for me to throw my bouquet over my head.

You know, three, two, one. I throw it over and it just goes to some random dude in the crowd. I actually went up to him afterwards, who was.

He was standing next to his girlfriend. She was looking a little concerned, and he was all like, sweet. It's okay.

Yeah, I don't think she was happy. He caught that. No, I don't think they made it.

I think he thought it was all a bit of a laugh, which it was.

But to throw your bouquet to 300 strangers, but also all people that are just super excited for you, just having a good day, they just all want the best for you and for you to have a good time. Like, people came up and gave me a hug and, like, shook our hands and were like, congratulations. And people were just genuinely happy for us.

And it was a really, really special day.

Yeah, that was awesome. So that's the story of our four day, five day wedding. Very crazy.

Yep.

Lots of fun. Let's talk about the serious bits, I guess.

Yeah. So if you are actually planning to get married, these are some of the important things that you need to. All right, so let's get into it.

What documents do I need to get married in Georgia? All right, so one of the first things you need is actually a written application of both persons intending to get married. This is one of the things.

This is what we went to the PSH to get.

It's a form.

They give it to you that you fill out. Basically. It's one of those Things that says, I have never been married.

If you have been married before, you actually need to have written documentation of your divorce so that you can get married again. And this sort of stuff all needs to be translated.

So if you haven't been to the PSH before, you just go to the information desk, ask for the marriage registration people that speak English and they'll give you a ticket with a number and tell you which area you go to for your application forms. PSH is super simple. It's. I do actually really like it there. This is really important. Ladies, if you're listening when com. Well, actually men.

Because men can change their last names too, but it's not such a common thing here, so men probably won't be asked. But when completing this paper paperwork at the psh, they will ask you if you wish to take your husband's last name.

This was something that I didn't really think about and I was just like, yeah, of course I'll. You know, that's something I always plan to do. So I just said yes.

It seems like something that's, like, really quite a simple decision to make, but I do want you to think carefully about it because following our wedding, we were traveling and then Covid and then we had a baby, and then.

So all of these things have meant that I haven't actually made it back to Australia to change my name legally, which has caused a whole bunch of other problems with getting different documentation and stuff. Because according to Georgian law, the second I got married to Tom, my name became Williams.

According, like, so according to all documents, in anything to do with Georgia, I am Megan Williams.

But according to my passport or my driver's license or anything that is documentation outside of Georgia, I'm Megan Collins, which gets very confusing.

It is very problematic, fortunately, because we live here and not somewhere else. We have a wedding certificate in Georgian and all of our wedding certificate is in their system.

So for the Georgian stuff, although it's a little bit of a headache, they do actually get it. Whereas when we've tried to do stuff outside of Georgia, it has been significantly more frustrating.

Yeah.

So that is a problem. Even so much as, like, taking flights and that sort of thing.

If you put the wrong name on the flight, then you have annoyances with having to get that changed as well.

One of the big issues is that I don't. Being an Australian citizen, I don't have a consulate here, so maybe other people might not have as much of an issue as I've had.

It depends what country you're from. Some are significantly easier than Australia.

So the closest consulate is in Turkey. I haven't made it there.

My understanding is that you can't change your name at the consulate. Yeah, a full embassy is required.

So I could have got the documents.

And then Covid happened. It just turned into a whole thing.

I haven't got my name changed since we got married. It's been a pain. Just think about it. Think about it. Okay, so another thing you need is passports of both parties.

So this, these will all need to be translated into Georgian. There are many, many notaries in Tbilisi that can do this for you for a fee. Do we know how much the translations of passports are at the moment?

It varies. Anything between like 25 and 100 gel. Depends who you're using.

But the main thing to consider with this and it happened to us and it was so frustrating is we took it to the notary, they translated it, we didn't really know what it said. We went to the PSH with the document and they went, nah, this is wrong, this isn't right.

This doesn't make it clear which one is your surname and which one is your first name.

Once again, me, I was the issue. My Australian passport is stupid and it makes it look like my last name is my first name and my first name and my middle name are my last name.

So it's like my name is Collins Megan.

So the notary totally messed it up.

Not their fault. My passport is stupid.

No, the passport is stupid. But also they could have asked us or checked or thought about it or anything.

And of course, no one's called Collins.

No, no one has the first name Collins, who's English.

So of course, if you go to a translator who's very, very good, they will be aware that Collins is not going to be a first name and that no one has two last names and a first name that's a surname that would be very confusing, which it was, but we had to get it all changed. It just meant more and more trips backwards, forward and that's very frustrating.

So using a notary who actually knows what they're doing is a good start. Not trying to do a massive plug here, but you can speak to expert, they can normally get this stuff done for you.

If you want to message infoxperthub, they of course, we have a whole team of very fluent English people and people doing translations and helping out with notary stuff.

Sometimes just getting someone to do it all for you just is.

Our prices are really about the same, but it's just more of a.

Like a concierge service, rather than having to go and hustle around trying to get it done yourself and arguing with people who don't really speak very much English.

It's up to you. Totally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you can just go to whichever office is better for you. Whatever.

You also need the identification of two witnesses, one male and one female. For our wedding, we had two witnesses that were locals, as we said, so we only needed to provide their ID cards.

We didn't have to have any additional translation needed. It was already there and easy. But if your witnesses are foreign, they will also need to have their passports translated at the notary as well.

So make sure you get that all put in together.

Translated and notarized, not just translated.

As I mentioned before, in the case of a person's second marriage, you need to have a document certifying the termination of the previous marriage. This also needs to be translated and notarized. And notarized. Yeah.

So there are, of course, different fees that you'll be looking at for getting married into ubilisi. So there's the marriage registration fee that we spoke about.

Um, this is at the public service hall, which is the signing of the paperwork at the registration desk. When we did it, it was free. We could just get married for free.

Like originally, if you just stood there at the desk and signed some paperwork, it was actually free. Yeah.

Yeah.

But I mean, prices of everything have gone up. So, yeah, who knows? It's probably not free anymore.

Yeah. So, yeah. So it was, as we said, when we were standing there going, do you. They're like, do you want to get married now? It was free.

We could get married for free. Standing there at the desk, just in our jeans and flip flops. No, it would have been summer. I would have been shorts and flip flops.

Don't be crazy, Meg. No one wears jeans in summer. Yeah, so there's that. There probably is a. Is a fee.

Now, I'm not going to say prices of everything, because you might be listening to this in a couple of years time, and the price is different. So just check with the PSH how.

Much it costs, but we're just saying that it's. It's quite affordable.

Yes.

So, yeah, we're talking. It's like less than 100 gels. So like less than $40 or whatever.

Then you can look at the marriage registration at the public service hall with a small ceremony for a while. The actual chapel was closed due to Covid. I think it's reopened now.

I'm pretty sure. It's open now.

Yeah, it's a really cute little.

I know you see like this big hustle and bustle building, but you walk around the back and there is a very sweet little chapel which is exactly where we got married.

Right on the river.

Yeah, it was actually really sweet. You can also choose to get married outside. There's a few marriage halls. Do they call them like marriage houses?

They call them marriage houses, I think so.

There's a few different places that you can choose from around town that you can organize to get a certified person to come out and marry you in one of the. The marriage houses around Tbilisi, depending on which one you choose, depends on how much it costs.

So for example, there's one up the top at Matatsminda park. That's a really popular one. You can actually be walking through the park and see like people get married.

It's like this glass sort of chapel thing up there. It's very cute. Cute. I think all the prices have changed, but they've got like packages there.

We can get bottles of champagne, way to service, music, flowers, that sort of stuff, rose petals. It all depends on what you want. They do offer different services depending on the level of package that you want to have.

But that is actually a really popular place for people to go and get married up there.

Of course, you can also just go and sign at the desk and then book a really nice anywhere we actually.

Recommend to most people is that go get the paperwork out of the way, like a day or out of the way.

No, I know we're married now. Got that out of the way.

But it's just paperwork. It's just, it is just paperwork. So get the paperwork done and out of the way and then do whatever you want.

Because once you're married and you have that certificate, you can just go and have a party in any way you want. So you can have. Which is what we did. We did actually did a second ceremony. It wasn't in Georgia, but you can do it in Georgia.

You have a second ceremony because you don't even have to have a celebrant. You can have a friend or anyone marry you once you've.

Because if you get married without doing all the paperwork and you want to do it like in a winery or at some nice chateau like or anywhere around Georgia, you have to have a certified person come and do it at the ceremony there with you. And that will cost. Depending on how far they have to travel and what their fees are.

Yeah, but I mean that's also not Crazy expensive.

So, no, no, no, if you want.

To do it that way.

But I just think it's easier that you've got it. It legally out of the way and then you just do your own thing. You can still. You wear the dress and the suit and you have the party that you want.

You've just already got all the legal, like, paperwork and all of that stuff out of the way.

You still do the vows, you still do everything like a wedding ceremony, but you just don't have to worry about all of the, you know, messing up the legal signing of the legal stuff. I think it's easier, but I don't know, it's up to.

Yeah, yeah, it depends how technical you want to be about exactly how you do your wedding, I suppose. But yeah, I think that's easier.

And then you can just have a party wherever you want and you don't have to worry about the exact registered person who has to do everything.

Exactly.

So, yeah, those are options for sure.

So, as we mentioned, just remember that the ceremony will be held in Georgian.

So if you want to have someone there to translate what the person's actually saying, you want to, you know, organize that as well, if that's something you want to have. Also, once you have your wedding certificate, it will be provided to you in Georgian.

So this is another thing that you will have to make another trip to the happy little notary and you will have to get this translated and apostillised.

It has to be apostilled. And it's important to note that a lot of notaries do not have the legal capability to apostille documents. And this is true worldwide.

It depends on the country that you're in. So it's better, just in case, to go to the PSH itself and get them to do it.

Yeah, get it done properly. Because if you are a traveler, this is going to be the most important document you travel with. You have to get it done properly.

You have to double check it that it's been done properly and that the.

Spellings are accurately translated.

Make sure everything has been accurately translated and done properly and then properly sealed and signed and all that stuff. And then. And it is really an important document that you will travel with and you've got to keep it safe from there on.

They have translated your name from English into Georgian, done a wedding certificate and then are translating it back from Georgian into English for the apostles version of this. So that's a big deal. Because stuff can very easily change spelling.

Yeah.

So you need to triple check with them that they've done everything perfectly and it matches your passport. Otherwise you are going to have a lot of trouble in future proving to any authority that this is your wedding certificate.

Yeah, really, really big problem.

But that said, that's it. We did it in four days. It's really simple. I know it might seem like it's a lot of. And it was.

It was a lot of back and forth between the notary for us and, you know, making sure we get the documents right.

Yeah. And I should mention with that apostle thing as well, that there's a time frame on that.

So if you were planning to just come here for a weekend, get married on the spot and then leave, you probably won't have your document done because a the weekends, they're closed. I mean, the wedding chapel, I think opens at the weekends, but the actual. The paperwork stuff is closed.

I think it can take up to eight working days.

Eight working days is the standard affordable version. And if you want to pay for the express one, they can do same day.

But if you got married on a Saturday and then you walk in on a Sunday to get it done, they're closed. It won't get done. And then if you're flying out Monday morning, first thing, it won't be done.

And by same day, that normally means like end of the same day. So not like on the spot in an hour necessarily. So, yeah. And it is a lot more. It's like five or six times more expensive to do it on the day.

So, you know, if you want to just hand it in, then take a nice vacation, take a trip around Georgia and then come and pick up the wedding certificate afterwards. That's obviously the best way to do it.

So obviously we got married in Tbilisi, but that is not the only option. A lot of people after we said that we got married here, they're like. Instantly we're like, oh, did you get married in Sagnagi? And we were like, what?

Why? Because Signagi is the city of love.

Signagi is a mountain town that's in Karketi. If you've listened to any of our other episodes, you'll probably know about this.

So this old cobbled town with these long fortifications around it and amazing views of the Caucasus Mountains, it's probably a lot more prettier place to get married than down by the river in Tbilisi, which, you know, it's still nice. But yeah, Signagi is probably one of the most beautiful places to get married.

So basically, pre Covid, Sagnagi was a really popular place to go and get married because they had a 24 hour wedding chapel going on there, 24.

7, Vegas style, but with the not quite as Vegasy glitziness.

No, no, it was just sweet and.

Just a place you walk into and someone will go, sure, let's do it.

Sadly, they're not 24. 7 anymore. They are working from 9am till 6pm except for Monday and Tuesday. They take Mondays and Tuesdays off, but they are open.

People want to get married on the weekend. Of course it makes more sense to take Monday, Tuesday off.

So if you're wanting a little bit more of a scenic wedding, you can also get married in Sagnagi. In Sagnagi you do have access to like notary bureaus and stuff like that, but they cannot apostle anything in Sagnagi.

So you probably want to get a lot of your paperwork done in Tbilisi and then head out to Sagi for your wedding.

The apostle is only necessary at the end. So once you're actually married and you've got the wedding certificate done is the time you need to come back to Tbilisi and get it done properly.

The main thing is to make sure that all of the documents that we discussed are ready.

So when you turn up to the wedding and you've got your two witnesses with you who are also going to sign that they witnessed the wedding happening, that all of those documents are there and good to go and that you already have your like everything submitted, your forms and all these sorts of things. Now to use the wedding hall in Sagnagi, you need to actually now book a week in advance or more so it's no more turn up like it used to be.

Whereas in Tbilisi you can just turn up. But of course you have to then sign up at the desk, which isn't quite as fun.

So do make sure you book in advance and do make sure you actually ask them to clarify exactly what you need to bring and what needs to have been done in advance and what doesn't need to have been done in advance because this stuff does. It has changed over the last few years and even though we ask for updates, by the time you listen to this podcast, it could be factually incorrect.

So do make sure that you know exactly what you need. I mean really.

But though, as Meg says, I would probably get your documents done before you head out to Tsignagi, that's normally what we recommend because there are better notaries in Tbilisi. I could not vouch for the quality of the notaries in Tsighnaghi. It's not like it's an international Hub or anything. Whereas Tbilisi is.

So, yeah, get everything done here, take the paperwork out with you and then. Then get married there.

Yeah, exactly. Also probably want to give a little bit of a shout out. We. We spoke about the fabulous photos that we had taken at our wedding.

So our photographer was Yoseb Mamnishvili. I will put a link to his Instagram in our show notes and also just keep an eye on our Instagram because then you can see I'll post.

Post some of our wedding photos and have a nice little look of our happy day.

But he did a really wonderful job and he's actually worked for us on corporate stuff since then and he's a really great guy, does some really great wedding photography and definitely someone that we recommend hiring for your upcoming day if you want to. You know, even though you eloping and you're having like a quickie wedding, doesn't mean you can't get great photos to remember the occasion with.

Yeah. And on top of that, we are launching our elopement packages this year.

So if you want to have some help with making sure all this paperwork's done properly, we're actually going to be on top of that to help you get the stuff done exactly the way it needs to be done. So you don't have as many issues as we did when we did it in person ourselves.

Now we have lawyers at Expat Hub that can help us with this and we have a tour company that will take you out there if you need witnesses, if you want the local witness who speaks Georgian and can translate the ceremony, things like that, they will come with you to the wedding. If you want to do it in Signagi, they will come with you.

They will take you out there, you go to have a winery lunch afterwards and celebrate, maybe with some friends, maybe not.

And if you want a larger wedding package, you know, get in touch with us about that as well because we have quite a few nice wedding venues around Karketti and near Tbilisi that would be great. And you can have some beautiful backdrop to your ceremony.

If you get married before you actually turn up and then do the ceremony there, that the pretend ceremony after the actual paperwork's been signed with all your friends and maybe you can even get some family out here.

Yeah. So yeah, it's totally not just about eloping. It's just about ease and convenience of getting married. You can.

We actually had some friends of ours who actually became friends from coming on a tour with us. They are planning on getting married next year and was asking us all about it.

So we're looking forward to, you know, giving them some tips and helping them out with their, you know, upcoming nuptials. But definitely something that's being planned advance, so family and that can come as well. So it's not just all about eloping.

That's just what we chose to do. But definitely people want to have like a proper full wedding ceremony. And that is totally cool as well.

It's just good to know how easy it is to do it here.

I mean, if we'd known, we could have easily got married at a winery, even if it was only with like nine people, which you can. I mean, that's what we're talking about here with the elopement package sort of thing that we're doing.

We mean, like, you just get a minibus for like 10 to 12 people to go out and. And go get married, that sort of thing as well.

Or.

Yeah, or full size weddings. But if we'd known we could have done that that easily back in the day.

I mean, it wouldn't have been easy because there probably wasn't anyone offering elopement packages. I don't even know that there's that many now.

Some people, but it was like thousands of US dollars.

Yeah. Yeah. Basically just handling the paperwork.

Yeah.

And not even like doing the whole winery thing.

Yeah.

So, yeah, our prices are nowhere near that crazy.

You will find people that are doing these wedding packages, but they are thousands upon thousands of do because people assume.

That weddings are expensive.

Well, I was looking. When we got married, the average price of a wedding in the United States was something like $30,000.

Yeah.

So to pay $3,000 for a wedding in Georgia seems quite affordable compared to like $30,000. Of course.

Yeah. But two people eloping, that's an insane amount of money to pay.

That's a lot of money. It's crazy. I think our entire wedding came to just less than two grand. And that was like dress, shoes, makeup, hair, photography, food for all.

We paid for all of everyone who came to our wedding. We paid for the entire meal and drinks, flowers and all of the paperwork. Everything. Like the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah. So it's definitely stupidly affordable to do. It's stupidly easy to do.

And if you want some of the annoyances taken care of and you want some of the cool stuff out in the wine country that you might not necessarily know about, but we can organise, then definitely pop us an email.

Infoetthistores.com Just let us know what you're looking for and what dates you're planning on getting married or being in Georgia, we can help you get stuff set up.

Tom, do we need to have a third wedding for like a, like a sample package? We'll be like, we get married for a third time and this will be. This is our sample wedding package so we can show everybody exactly what they can do.

You just keep wanting to get married. Well, it's fun.

It's a party, and I get to wear a pretty dress and get my hair done.

It's true. All right, well, maybe. Maybe wedding number three.

I love it. All right, guys. Well, if you do have any questions, please feel free to email us. You can email us@infoethistours.com youm can eat.

Well and have really good wine at your wedding. That's. That's sort of our goal here.

It's.

It's not just about the marriage part. It's about the party as well.

Exactly. And we can answer any questions that you have or we can also discuss. Discuss any sort of packages that you might want to discuss as well.

Just reach out to us. We are. We are here to help. All right, that is the end of another episode. Talking about our love.

Sure. Yeah. Leave us a review. Five stars is the only type of review. We like that sort of thing.

Oh, thank you to everybody that has left a review. I finally found out how to log into my Apple podcasts thing and find reviews.

It's really weird because I have to look by country, so unless I know a particular country, someone from a particular country has left a review, I can't find it and there's a lot of countries to scroll through. Anyway, to everybody that has left a review.

I have read them and thank you so much for taking the time to just leave five stars and tell people about us. We really, really, really appreciate it. We also just appreciate every single one of you for actually listening to us ramble. On. I don't know.

It's not rambling. It's passion.

Semi productive rambling. We.

I don't. We. We love it here. And you know, we're.

We're a little rambly sometimes, but you get the point of what we're talking about and you know, it's all makes a little quirky and fun, right?

I hope so.

I hope so.

Otherwise we're really barking up the wrong tree.

All right, well, thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing, thank you for writing reviews.

We appreciate every single one of you and we hope we will have you back back for our next episode. I don't know what it's about, but it'll be coming out. I don't know when that'll be either, but it'll be out.

We got a lot of stuff going on. All right. Don't send us complaints that we don't have enough episodes. It's not our fault. We're trying.

I'm sorry.

We got a lot of stuff going on. Running multiple businesses and having a kid, you know, getting married for a third time, planning our third wedding.

I have to plan a third wedding. I'm busy.

I haven't got time for that. Planning other people's weddings at the moment.

So, you know, we do have some weddings, Weddings coming.

Yeah. So there's a lot, a lot going on here in Georgia.

Yeah.

All right. Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to the Tivolisi Podcast.

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