Getting Married in Denmark as a Foreigner — The Document Mistake That Cost Us 2 Months

I have photographed over a hundred weddings.

I know how to read light. I know how to find the angle. I know that the difference between a good photo and a great one is often just — where you're standing when you take it.

What I apparently did not know, in the year I was planning my own wedding, was how to photograph a passport.

My husband is Danish. I'm Chinese. We applied to AFL — Familieretshuset, the Danish Agency of Family Law — like every other international couple does. We filled out the digital form. We paid the DKK 2,100 fee (non-refundable, by the way). We uploaded our documents.

And then we waited.

And waited.

And then got a letter asking us to resubmit.

The passport photo was wrong. Not blurry, exactly. Just — one page. One slightly cropped, slightly dark, distinctly incomplete page with a bit of reflection.

And what AFL requires, which is every single page, in colour, including the ones with nothing on them.

Processing restarted from zero.

We waited two months.

Two months, because of a passport photo. Taken by a professional photographer. Who photographs things for a living.

(I would like to state, for the record, that I know exactly where those photos are. And I will not be sharing them.)

What the AFL Application Actually Requires?

Here's what I've learned since then, from my own application and from helping the couples I work with navigate this process:

The AFL document requirements are not complicated. But they are specific. And the gap between "I think I have everything" and "AFL agrees I have everything" is exactly where most couples lose weeks — sometimes months — of their timeline.

So I put together the document kit I wish had existed when I was sitting in our Copenhagen apartment. It could have helped us to accelerate the process so much more!

The Internationals Get Married in Denmark Document Kit

The kit covers everything you need to submit a complete, correct application to AFL the first time:

The full document checklist — what everyone needs, what only some people need, and what you absolutely do not need (single status certificate, I'm looking at you — not required since 2019). Plus the Declaration of Truth, the Section 11b Declaration, and a Power of Attorney template if you need a third party to submit on your behalf.

Bilingual in English and Chinese. Sourced from Familieretshuset's 2026 guidelines.

Get the Document Kit

It is pure free! Buy me a coffee when you are in town. ;P Hope this can save you more than two months of your wedding timeline.

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