Danish mayors seek power to charge foreign couples for weddings
Friday 2nd October 2026 on 10:01 in
Denmark
Several Danish mayors want the law changed to let municipalities charge for wedding ceremonies, as rising numbers of foreign couples marry in Denmark and add to local costs, DR reports.
Under current rules, municipalities cannot charge for the ceremony itself. The Agency of Family Law charges 2,100 kroner to process an application for a certificate confirming a couple can marry, but municipalities receive no payment for their subsequent casework, identity checks or the ceremony.
Stevns Municipality held ceremonies for just over 1,000 foreign couples last year. Mayor Anette Mortensen said the municipality had to cover the costs from its own budget.
Ringsted Municipality has also seen a rise in foreign weddings, with numbers up 150 per cent this year compared with the same period last year. Mayor Andreas Karlsen said the growing expense should not be left to local taxpayers and called for municipalities to be allowed to charge a modest fee.
Denmark has become a popular wedding destination for foreign couples because marrying there can be faster and easier than in their home countries. Vasundhara Devi Myakala, who travelled from Leipzig with her German partner Milan Bjelakovic to marry at the Stevns town hall, said gathering documents from India had made the process difficult. She said the couple came to Denmark for a quicker process, not because it was cheap, and would have been willing to pay a fee.
Rasmus Clarck Sørensen, director of the agency Getting Married in Denmark, said some couples face complicated rules and bureaucracy elsewhere in Europe, making Denmark a more straightforward option.
Business association Dansk Erhverv also supports allowing municipalities to charge. Its industry director, Lars Ramme Nielsen, warned that without a fee, municipalities might limit the number of foreign weddings they can handle, potentially prompting couples to marry elsewhere. The article cites annual turnover of 233 million kroner and notes that some municipalities have already stopped accepting foreign couples for ceremonies.
Tags: Denmark, weddings, municipalities