# Better to registering international marriage at SA embassy or in SA?



## SFS82 (Jul 10, 2016)

Hi everyone,

I've been sifting through the spousal/relative visa threads and haven’t really found anything similar to my situation, so apologies if I missed anything relating to my situation in another thread.

I'm an SA citizen living in South Korea since 2010. My husband is a US citizen. We are both ESL teachers here in Korea. We are signed our legal marriage paperwork in South Korea at the end of January 2016, so we are legally married here. We haven’t registered the marriage in either South Africa or the US yet.

We are both coming to the ends of contracts at the end of February 2017, and we want to take an extended vacation. We were hoping to spend 6 months in South Africa so that my husband can get to know my family better. We are also planning on having a wedding ceremony in April 2017 in South Africa.

We don’t want to be in South Africa long term just yet as we both still want to travel and continue being ESL teachers. We are planning on registering the marriage with the South African embassy in Seoul soon, but we have some concerns. My questions are:

1) If we register the marriage at the embassy, can my husband still enter South Africa on the normal 90 day stay that his passport allows him in February?

2) Should we go through the effort of getting a temporary relative’s visa? We are not planning on living in SA because of financial reasons, and we don’t want to file any paperwork there that will keep us tied there. However, we are worried about time since he can’t just go to Namibia, for example, to make a visa run. 

3) Would it be better not to register the marriage at the South African embassy but rather wait until we have our ceremony and then register the marriage? What are the implications of doing this?

If anyone could share any kind of similar experience and how they handled it, I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!


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## Oyibopeppeh (Sep 8, 2010)

Can't comment on the marriage ins and outs, but a word of caution on the border visa runs - A lot of the DHA officers at the border posts are wise to it and will give a maximum of 7 days stamp. Just be aware.


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