Consider your ideal wedding. You may picture religious pageantry, majestic domes and the auspicious light of the Divine beaming on a white dress. Maybe you see friends dancing on a pub’s veranda, cheering for you in front of a town hall, or anywhere really – the people you love are there, and it’s all that matters.
What you are probably not picturing is a meet-up with Chris and Mitch, two complete strangers waiting for you and your future spouse by a nondescript fountain in the middle of Copenhagen. Judging by my soon-to-be-wife’s bewildered laugh throughout the entire 20 minutes of our wedding, this is not what she was picturing either. Should I add that neither of us is Danish, or lives in Denmark?
My wife, who is attached to her privacy and thus will remain “my wife” for the purpose of this piece, is British-Polish, and made her life in the UK. I am French. Brexit means Brexit. To live happily ever after under the same London roof, we had to prove our commitment to the relevant authorities.
Our immigration adviser – an odd but knowledgable fellow – was unsubtle about it. On a Zoom call about a year ago, he mimed a rifle being reloaded. To end our long-distance relationship and build a life together, it was time for a shotgun wedding.
But while love doesn’t wait, administrations around Europe like to take their sweet time. Marrying in Britain required a “fiance visa”, which would have allowed me to stay in the UK while waiting to get married, but not to work, making it financially unviable. Doing it in my home country would have required dealing with French bureaucracy – you can appreciate why we ruled that out. If only there was a simple way to marry abroad, we thought.
A single Google search was enough to find an agency called Marry Abroad Simply.
Despite the hundreds of five-star reviews praising “excellent communication”, “genuine kindness” and a “completely stress-free experience”, I couldn’t shake the feeling that getting wed with Marry Abroad Simply was a bit like going for a haircut to a salon named Best Haircuts. One would hope for a bit more mystique.
But so be it – I dialled the WhatsApp number on the website and mumbled something to the effect of: “Hello, I’d like to marry my partner as soon as possible, please.” Instead of saying, “Sounds a bit dodgy, love”, a charming woman called Leanne laid out her fast-and-furious pitch.
Plan A, she said, was Gibraltar, the easiest option when it comes to paperwork. However, the marriage certificate can take a few weeks to arrive in the post. Plan B was Denmark, but city halls were crowded, so we would need to pay extra for a quicker ceremony in the park. Finally, she added, “I can get you married in Georgia in a couple of weeks.”
We opted for a compromise between speed and familiarity, and picked the “Copenhagen Express” package.
Denmark, we found out in the process, is the Vegas of Europe. Thanks to its lenient, multilingual administration, couples from around the world flock to the Scandinavian kingdom to elope. The trend started more than a decade ago, with Germans crossing the border to marry their partner from outside the Schengen area. It’s not a bad business: international couples bring about 120m kroner (about £13.7m) to the economy every year.
Leanne, who spoke to me after our blitz wedding, reckons her company helps 150 couples in Denmark every month. She often deals with cases more complex than ours, such as same-sex unions where one spouse comes from a country still denying them their rights. A former government document specialist, in 2013 she joined this industry specialising in quick, fuss-free wedding planning.
Our own wedding attained summits of fusslessness you wouldn’t believe. The day before, our suitcases barely unpacked, we got to Copenhagen city hall, where the civil registrar desk also serves as a gift shop. We queued with other couples to prove our identity to the Danish government. Fake bouquets were displayed on a table next to a sign saying “Flowers (for rent) on your wedding day”.
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We passed on the offer and the next morning rushed to the flower shop at Copenhagen train station. The white and purple bouquet my partner chose would look splendid under the grey Danish sky. With our prêt-à-porter suit and dress, she was gorgeous and I was dapper enough. We were ready to walk down the aisle.
After a 15-minute stroll through Copenhagen’s Latin Quarter, under the gaze of curious tourists and blase locals, we arrived at our venue: the gardens of the Royal Library. It’s a nice but unassuming park in the heart of the city. We had no guests, as you can imagine, and Marry Abroad Simply procured us Chris and Mitch.
Chris and Mitch – bless them – were our professional and only witnesses. They introduced us to our officiant, a mild-mannered gentleman named Jesper. We then stood awkwardly in front of the building that housed centuries of Danish literature. Jesper gave a brief speech about how we, too, were writing the first page of our common book. Listening to the sniffs on the video Chris took of that moment, I believe he shed a tear. But Leanne since told me they could do several of these a day, so he may just have had a cold.
We were so engrossed in the absurdity of the situation that we didn’t pay that much attention to Jesper’s speech. We said our vows, exchanged our rings, and kissed under the golf clap of onlookers. After some pictures, including a selfie with the gang, we crouched down on a bench to sign the papers. My wife and I were married.
You might find this unromantic, but I couldn’t disagree more. Throughout our Danish escapade, we kept bumping into other couples roaming in and around city hall. We could often guess from their looks and their accents that they were there for reasons similar to us. They were lovers seeking to tear down the borders erected between them, to prove their most intimate devotion to faceless pen-pushers.
That day was for us against the world. It was a day of boldness and belief in a bright future. To my readers longing for marriage, I say: forget bridesmaids, distant cousins and nervy photographers. What I wish for you is to marry abroad simply.
