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GIBRALTAR
Gibraltar was never on Bruno Miani’s list of places to visit, but everything changed when the pandemic changed his plans to marry his girlfriend in Dublin, where they live.
With government offices closed due to virus restrictions, the 40-year-old photographer and his partner struggled to obtain the documents they needed for a wedding license and faced a long wait for an available time for the ceremony.
So the Brazilian couple took a low-cost flight to Malaga and then traveled by bus to Gibraltar, a tiny British territory in the extreme south of Spain where they were married at the local Registry Office before a portrait of Queen Elizabeth.
“The quickest way to get married now is to go to Gibraltar,” said Miani, whose eyes filled with tears when the registrar declared that he and Natalia Senna Alves de Lima were now legally husband and wife.
“We love each other very much. We already live together as a married couple. This makes it official. “
Gibraltar requires minimal bureaucracy to get married and there are no virus border restrictions, which has helped make it a hotspot for weddings during the pandemic.
Couples only need to present their passports and birth certificates, and spend the night in the territory before or after their wedding.
Then they just need the authorities in their home country to register their marriage.
Wedding planners report a high demand from couples from outside the territory.
“It is absolutely insane. We just can’t have enough spaces and slots, ”said Leanne Hindle, director of wedding events company Marry Abroad Simply.
Many marriages that take place in Gibraltar involve couples of different nationalities in long-distance relationships who were unable to travel to each other’s country to get married and start life together due to travel restrictions from the virus.
There is often an urgent need to get married, as in the case of a couple whose insurance would not cover the expensive fertility treatment they needed to have a child unless they were married, Hindle said.
A common scenario involves a person who is offered a job in another country and they can only bring their partner with them if they are legally married, he added.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Hindle said. “It is not just because they want to get married during COVID, because it is a story for the grandchildren.”
Scott Gerow, a 41-year-old American citizen, married a 44-year-old Russian human resources manager in Gibraltar’s picturesque botanical gardens earlier this month.
The couple met in January in St. Petersburg, where Gerow was working at the time, but after he had to return to the United States in June, they were kept apart by virus travel bans that prevented them from visiting each other’s country.
As a married couple, you will now be able to join him in the USA.
If the option of getting married in Gibraltar did not exist, “we would continue to video chat every day,” Gerow said.
Gibraltar also attracts many couples from neighboring Spanish regions because its rules on wearing face masks in public and the size of social gatherings are less strict, said Resham Mahtani, wedding planner for Rock Occasions.
The Andalusia region of southern Spain, which surrounds the British territory, limits private gatherings to a maximum of six people in the interior, compared to the limit of 16 people in Gibraltar, which only recorded its first death from COVID-19 earlier this month.
Most of the couples who come from further afield attend their wedding without the presence of relatives due to the expense of traveling to Gibraltar. Many use laptops and mobile phones to broadcast the ceremony over the Internet to loved ones at home.
“We were alone, away from my family and friends. That was really difficult, ”said Liza Ursini, a 57-year-old Canadian nurse who traveled to Gibraltar last month to marry a man from the southern Spanish city of Seville.
So she was finally able to move to her hometown in the French-speaking province of Quebec so that they could start living together.
The ease of getting married in Gibraltar made international news when John Lennon married Yoko Ono there in 1969 after facing a number of obstacles in other countries.
The event was immortalized in an image of the couple standing in front of Gibraltar’s famous limestone promontory at the territory’s airport and in the Beatles song “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
The territory has faced increased demand by increasing the number of weddings that take place daily in its small registry office and expanding the number of outdoor venues where ceremonies can be held.
Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, told AFP that he was “delighted that Gibraltar has become known as a place of love rather than a place of division.”
For anyone who needs to “make that bond of love official and legal, Gibraltar is the place for you,” he added.
