The first thing to know about the New Zealand marriage licence is that you probably will not collect it. Not the way couples picture it, with a counter and a queue and an envelope handed over on the morning of the ceremony. If you are using a celebrant, the licence can be sent to them directly by email or courier, and it is already in their folder by the time they meet you at the trailhead.
The second thing to know is the number. NZD 158. That is the government fee for the licence itself, and celebrants set their own fees on top of it.
What follows is the chain as the New Zealand Government publishes it: which of the two notice forms applies to you, where the one unavoidable in-person signature happens, how the fee is paid from abroad, and how we build a Wanaka or Fiordland day around a three-day processing window. We are photographers and filmmakers, not lawyers. Rules change and circumstances differ, so confirm the detail with Births, Deaths and Marriages or your own consulate before you book flights.
NZD 158, three days, one signature in person
A New Zealand marriage licence costs NZD 158 and takes three days to issue once your signed declaration reaches the Registrar. Couples living overseas file form BDM 58. You do not queue at a counter for the licence itself, because it can be sent straight to your celebrant by email or courier.
The one step you cannot do from your kitchen table
Difficulty rating: fiddly for about a week, then genuinely easy. New Zealand is one of the more welcoming countries in the world to marry in as a visitor, and the clearest evidence of that is the paperwork itself. The Government publishes a notice form built specifically for couples who are ordinarily resident outside New Zealand. That form exists because this happens constantly.
The Government’s own wording is that most people can get a marriage licence. Same-sex marriage is legal, and the licence route is identical. The chain is short: two possible notice forms, one fee, one declaration signed in front of an authorised person, and one visit to a registry office in New Zealand before the ceremony.
None of it requires a translated document, a legalised copy or a consular appointment. The chain runs on forms you download, a signature witnessed by someone the form names, and a payment instrument your own bank produces.
That last item is the only part you cannot do from home, and it is worth planning properly rather than squeezing in. Everything else happens at a desk in Denver or Charleston weeks before you fly. For the cost side, the New Zealand dollar has recently traded at roughly sixty US cents, which puts the licence somewhere near a hundred US dollars. It is one of the cheaper lines in your whole trip, well under a night in Queenstown in February.
If you have not yet worked out the shape of the trip around the paperwork, our guide to how to plan an elopement from start to finish covers the sequencing question that sits underneath all of this: what to book first.
BDM 58 or BDM 60: filing in the right order
There are two notice forms and picking the wrong one is the single most common way to lose a fortnight. The difference is not nationality. It is where you are ordinarily resident.
| Your situation | Notice form | Where the declaration is signed | How the fee is paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Both of you ordinarily resident outside New Zealand | BDM 58 | In front of an authorised person, using the list printed on the form | International bank draft in New Zealand dollars, payable to the Department of Internal Affairs |
| You are in New Zealand | BDM 60 | In person with your local Registrar of Marriages, who witnesses you signing | Paid to the Registrar when the notice is lodged |
For an American couple flying in for a week in Otago, the order runs like this.
- Lock the date, the place and the celebrant. The celebrant matters early, because the licence can be routed to them directly, and that is the version of this you want.
- Take the correct notice form. BDM 58 if both of you are ordinarily resident outside New Zealand. BDM 60 if you are already in the country.
- Sign the declaration in front of an authorised person. The form carries the list of who qualifies. Read that list before you make the appointment, not after.
- Arrange the fee as an international bank draft. New Zealand dollars, made payable to the Department of Internal Affairs. This is not a card payment and your bank may need several working days to produce it.
- Send the notice to the Births, Deaths and Marriages office. The draft travels with it.
- Allow three days for the licence to issue. You cannot marry until it has been issued, so this window is real and it sits at the end of a postal journey from the other side of the Pacific.
- Sign a declaration at a New Zealand registry office before the ceremony. The addresses are printed on the application form. If you are signing in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, the appointment can be booked online.
- Have the licence sent to your celebrant. Email or courier, your choice. Make it deliberately rather than leaving it blank.
Nothing in that list needs a translator, and nothing needs to be walked round a consulate. It is eight steps, and six of them happen before you pack.
Work back from the ceremony to the licence application
The legal minimum is short. The comfortable minimum is not the same thing, and the gap between them is where couples lose sleep for no reason at all.
| When | What happens | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Six to eight weeks before | Notice completed, declaration signed before an authorised person, bank draft arranged | At home |
| After the notice arrives | Three days for the licence to issue | Department of Internal Affairs |
| Once issued | Licence sent to your celebrant by email or courier | Your celebrant |
| During your New Zealand days, before the ceremony | Declaration signed at a registry office | The office listed on your form |
| Ceremony hour | Celebrant arrives with the licence in hand | Wherever you have chosen to stand |
We plan to the six-to-eight-week version, every time. Not because the three days are unreliable, but because the slow parts of this chain are the parts nobody controls: an international bank draft that a branch has to order in, a postal run to the registry, a diary that has to accommodate an authorised witness in your own city. Push all of that to the front of the schedule and the New Zealand end takes care of itself.
One scheduling note that saves real trouble. The registry office declaration is a weekday errand in a city, and your ceremony is very likely not in a city. Queenstown to Glenorchy is about forty-five minutes of lake road. Te Anau to Milford Sound is closer to two hours each way, and Christchurch to Aoraki/Mount Cook Village is the better part of four. We build the office visit into an arrival day or a spare morning, never into the day you are getting married, and we plan the driving around it in advance.
The bank draft, the wrong form and the three-day wait
This is the section other guides skip. None of it is dramatic. All of it is the difference between a calm week and a scramble.
The bank draft is the slowest thing in the chain. An international bank draft in New Zealand dollars, made out to the Department of Internal Affairs, is a physical instrument that a US bank orders and prints. Some branches do it in a day. Some send it to a central desk and take a week, and some charge a handling fee that nobody mentions until you are at the counter. Start this the same week you decide on your date, and everything downstream relaxes.
The wrong form is a silent error. BDM 60 looks like the obvious one because it is the one that comes up most often in general reading. If you both live outside New Zealand, BDM 58 is yours. Filing the resident form from Portland does not produce a polite correction by return of post; it produces a delay you find out about later.
The authorised witness is a defined list, not a general category. The form tells you who may witness your declaration. Read the list first and match a real person to it before you book anything, because assuming any notary will do is the kind of small wrong turn that costs a fortnight when the notice comes back.
Three days means three days of processing. It is not a countdown you can shorten by arriving in the country early or by asking nicely on the day. Treat it as fixed and build backwards from it.
Choose the delivery method on purpose. The licence can go to your celebrant by email or by courier. Email is instant and leaves nothing to a rural delivery run. If you pick courier, someone has to be at that address on that day, and in the Mackenzie Basin or on the West Coast that is a genuine question rather than a formality.
Check the office against your route, not against a map of the country. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch take online bookings for the appointment. Every address is printed on the form. Look at yours next to your actual itinerary before you commit to a ceremony location four hours away from it.
Treat the quoted fees and processing windows as the version used to build this timeline. Re-check the current amount and deadline with the issuing office before you lock in flights or appointments for new zealand marriage licence.
Legal at home, ceremony in New Zealand
A large share of the couples we photograph in New Zealand sign the legal paperwork in their own county before they fly, then hold the actual ceremony on a moraine above a glacier-fed lake with nobody else within a mile. This is not a compromise. It is a good plan, and for some itineraries it is the better one.
What changes: no notice form, no bank draft, no authorised witness in your home city, no weekday errand carved out of a five-day trip. What does not change: anything you will see, remember, or watch back. The celebrant still reads. You still say the words you wrote on the plane. The film still opens with the two of you walking up through tussock at six in the morning, and the vows still land the way they land.
The practical argument for it is time. A week in the South Island fills up fast once you add a helicopter window, a weather day held in reserve and two or three long drives. Removing a city appointment from that week is worth more than it sounds, particularly if your ceremony location sits four hours from the nearest office on your form. The practical argument against it is that some couples want the legal moment and the real moment to be the same moment, in the same place, on the same morning. Both are good reasons. Neither is the wrong answer.
There is also a middle path. A registry office ceremony in New Zealand carries a set fee of NZD 175, paid to the celebrant in advance, which some couples treat as the legal formality on their first morning in the country before driving south for the day that actually matters to them. Our destination elopement guides go into which regions suit which of these shapes.
Tell us which version you are leaning toward and we will build the week around it, including the office visit, the drive times and the hour the light is worth standing in. Tell Us Your Story.
Where our planning ends and the licence stays with you
We handle the shape of the day. Destination and location design, a custom timeline built around light and real travel time, permit research and logistics guidance, weather alternatives held in reserve, and the coordination that puts your celebrant, your licence and the sun in the same place at the same time. We hold your date against the practical constraints, including the registry appointment. What we do not do is file forms or give legal advice, and you should be suspicious of any photography team that says otherwise.
Because photography and film come from one team here, the ceremony hour gets planned once rather than negotiated twice on the morning. There is a second camera on the ground for the signing, which means the wide frame of the two of you on the ridge and the close frame of the pen on the paper both exist, and neither of you was asked to do anything twice to get them. You can see how that plays out across full days in our published elopement stories and films.
Coverage runs from a single full day to a multi-day expedition across several New Zealand regions, and the current figures sit on our pricing page.
Common questions
How much does a marriage licence cost in New Zealand?
NZD 158 for the licence itself. Celebrants set their own fees on top of that, so the licence is only one line of the legal cost. A registry office ceremony carries a separate set fee of NZD 175, paid to the celebrant in advance.
Do we need to live in New Zealand to get married there?
No. The Government publishes a notice of intended marriage form specifically for couples ordinarily resident outside New Zealand, form BDM 58, and its own guidance is that most people can get a marriage licence. Visiting couples marry in New Zealand constantly and the process is built for it.
Which form do we file if we live in the United States?
BDM 58, the notice of intended marriage where both parties are ordinarily resident outside New Zealand. BDM 60 is the version for people who are in the country. Filing BDM 60 from a US address is the most common avoidable delay in the whole process.
How long does a New Zealand marriage licence take to come through?
Three days to issue, counted from the moment your signed notice reaches the Registrar. The realistic timeline is longer because of international post and the bank draft, which is why we plan filing six to eight weeks out rather than trying to hit the legal minimum.
Where do we pick up the licence before the ceremony?
Usually nowhere. If you are using a celebrant, the licence can be sent to them directly by email or courier, so it arrives with them rather than with you. Separately, you do need to attend a registry office in New Zealand to sign a declaration before the ceremony, and the addresses are printed on your application form.
Can same-sex couples marry in New Zealand?
Yes. Same-sex marriage is legal in New Zealand and the licence route, the forms and the fee are exactly the same. Nothing in the paperwork chain differs.
How far ahead should we file the notice?
Once your date, your location and your celebrant are settled. We work to six to eight weeks before the ceremony, which leaves room for the bank draft, the post to the registry and the three-day issue window without anyone refreshing a tracking page at midnight.
Picking the date around the registrar and the light
The paperwork is the smallest part of a New Zealand elopement, and once you see it laid out in eight steps it stops being the thing you worry about. What deserves the worry is the hour. In late autumn the sun comes over the Remarkables long after breakfast, and in December it is up before four. That, not the licence, is what decides when you stand where you are going to stand.
Send us your dates, the region you keep coming back to, and one line on the legal route you are taking, at home or here. Everything on our side happens in writing, so you will have a reply and an initial brochure within 24 hours and you can read it at your own pace. Check Your Date.