I was completely lost when I first looked into marrying my Moroccan boyfriend. My plans are on hold at the moment but I think I have a good idea of what's needed. After someone emailed me to ask if I had any advice, I thought I'd post it to help anyone else as confused as I was!

The first question is if you want to get married in Morocco or England.

If you want to marry in England, you need to apply for a fiance visa. He will do this in Morocco at the Embassy in Rabat. You will need to look at this list - you need similar things as for a settlement visa.

http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servle ... 4572158422

You basically need to prove that you can support him financially and he has somewhere to stay without needing public funding e.g. jobseeker's allowance. This will allow him 6 months in the UK to marry, but he cannot work in this time. After the wedding if he wants to settle in the UK, you will need to apply for a settlement visa as well. The fees are about £500 for each application.

If you want to get married in Morocco, you will need to apply for a 'certificate of non-impediments' from your local registry office. You will have an appointment and then it takes 3 weeks before they give you the certificate. You also need to apply for a police record. UK papers are valid for three months, so make sure you don't do these too early. You need to take these papers to the Embassy in Morocco and they will issue you with a 'certificate of no objection'. You also need to take your passport and birth certificate. He needs to go with his identity card/passport as well.

You take the documents issued to you at the Embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also in Rabat, to legalise the signature on them.

Then you need to take everything to the registry office in the town your partner is from. I hear each town has different requirements so you should ask him to find this out in advance. You need to provide translated copies of everything in Arabic to apply for permission to marry. Apparently it can take from a few days to a few weeks to get permission! After that Bob's your uncle and you're good to get married!

I haven't actually been through it yet, but from my research that is most of how to get married.

After marriage in either the UK or Morocco you have to apply for the settlement visa if you want to settle here (see the link above). You will need to have a Moroccan marriage certificate translated to English for the application. It might take about three months before he is given an interview appointment for the visa.

I hope this of some help and good luck!

Shama