# Special Situation: Attesting Marriage Certificate



## mimo_yyy (Jul 4, 2010)

All,
I know there have been many posts regarding documents attestation; but this one is very specific. I appreciate your help trying to shed some light.

I am moving to Dubai as a US citizen (i.e. on a US Passport).
My marriage certificate is from Egypt as I am originally from Egypt and was married there.

My marriage certificate is in English; and it is already certified/attested by the foreign ministry of Egypt (which is the highest authentication authority in Egypt)

It will take me long time to get this document attested by the US State Department (if even possible)

So, my question is:

Given the fact that my marriage certificate is already attested by the foreign ministry of Egypt, What are my options after I arrive to Dubai?
Am I supposed to get the document sent to the UAE Embassy in Egypt to get it stamped there?
Is there an option to do this in Dubai? I heard that “Foreign Affairs Ministry” can attest it without the need to send it to the UAE embassy. Is this true?

As always, thanks in advance to such great forum members.


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## pmac34 (Jan 4, 2010)

Had a similar situation with my marriage cert. I am from the Republic of Ireland and I was married in Northern Ireland which is technically the UK (won't get in to the politics of that right now) Our passports are Irish. So we had to send our marriage cert. to the UK Foreign Office to be attested. We then sent it to the UAE Embassy in London to be attested there. We did not have it attested by the Ministry in Ireland.

When we arrived in Dubai the PRO for the company I work for still had to send our cert to the local Ministry to be attested again here, however he told me that this would have been a much longer process had we not had our certificate attested by the UAE Embassy in London.

Reading your situation it looks pretty similar and I would suggest that you may not need to have your marriage cert attested in the US but would reccomend that you have it attested by the UAE Embassy in Egypt - It might save some time and inconvenience when you are here.

Hope some of the above makes sense.


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## bonk (Jun 13, 2008)

The principal of attestation is to verify that a document is what it says it is. So I wouldn't have thought US attestation is relevant given that the marriage certificate was not issued by any US authority.

Ditto for a UK marriage certificate - I would have though that Eire does not attest UK issued documents of any sort.

Go to the UAE Embassy in Egypt before you leave and get it attested. They won't attest the certificate itself, they will attest the Egyptian foreign ministry stamp if I understand the process correctly. If anything different needs to be done, they should be able to tell you (or phone them first).


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