Court Marriage and Marriage Registration in Paschim Vihar, West Delhi

1. One colony, one old sub-division, and a revenue map that changed on 1 January 2026

Paschim Vihar is a planned colony on the Outer Ring Road, blocks lettered rather than numbered, two Green Line stations of its own — Paschim Vihar East and Paschim Vihar West, the latter open since 2 April 2010 — Peeragarhi on one side and Jwala Heri’s market in the middle of it. PIN 110063. It is one of the most settled residential pockets in West Delhi, and that settledness is exactly why the first question on this page is an administrative one.

For as long as anyone here has needed a marriage registered, the answer has been Punjabi Bagh. The West district had three sub-divisions — Patel Nagar, Rajouri Garden and Punjabi Bagh — and a Paschim Vihar address sat under the third. That is the answer your neighbour will give you, the answer in every older listing, and the answer the property dealer downstairs is certain about.

So we are going to do something most pages in this business will not, and tell you plainly what we do not know. We cannot tell you from a published source whether “Punjabi Bagh” survives as the name of your sub-division after the reorganisation, or whether a Paschim Vihar address now sits under a differently named office. Anybody who states it with total confidence — including a page that looks exactly like this one — is repeating a pre-2026 list and hoping.

What we can tell you is that this is a five-minute problem and not a five-week one, and that it is yours to settle before you travel rather than at a counter.

The telephone call, and the four things to ask

Call the office, read your address out exactly as it is printed on the document you will produce — block letter, house or flat number, “Paschim Vihar”, PIN 110063 — and ask four questions in this order.

1. “Which sub-division and which district does this address fall under today?” Not last year. Today. If the answer names an office you have never heard of, that is the reorganisation and not a mistake.
2. “Is the marriage registration counter for this address at that office?” Sub-division boundaries and the counter that actually accepts marriage applications are two separate facts, and they occasionally diverge during a reorganisation.
3. “What do you accept as residence proof for a flat in a co-operative group housing society?” Ask it in those words. Paschim Vihar is a society colony and the answer matters more here than almost anywhere in Delhi. Section 8 of this page sets out what the answers usually are.
4. “Are appointments taken online for this office, and under which service name?” Service names change; the person at the other end of the telephone knows which one is live this month.

One more thing, because it saves people a wasted morning on the Outer Ring Road. No court registers your marriage. Not Tis Hazari, not Rohini Courts, not the Dwarka complex. Registration under the Hindu Marriage Act and solemnisation or registration under the Special Marriage Act are done by the Marriage Officer or the Registrar of Marriages, who in Delhi is the SDM — an officer of the Revenue Department sitting in a sub-divisional office. “Court marriage” is what everybody calls it. A court is not where it happens.

2. The route almost nobody tells you about: Chapter III of the Special Marriage Act

Here is the situation we see most often from this colony, and the one the rest of this page is built around.

A couple had a wedding. A real one — a ceremony, families, a date everyone remembers. Then they went to get it registered and were told the Hindu Marriage Act route was not open to them, because the two of them do not both fall under that Act: one is Hindu and one is Christian, or Muslim, or Parsi; or the ceremony was in a form that the Act does not reach. And the advice they got was either “one of you will have to convert” or “you will have to do the whole thing again from scratch under the Special Marriage Act, with the thirty-day notice on the board.”

Both of those answers are wrong, or at least incomplete, and the correct one is sitting in the statute where nobody looks: Chapter III of the Special Marriage Act 1954, sections 15 to 18, headed Registration of Marriages Celebrated in Other Forms.

Section 15, condition by condition

The Marriage Officer may register the marriage where all six of these are satisfied. The statutory words are in quotation marks because the precise wording is what you will be held to.

• (a) “a ceremony of marriage has been performed between the parties and they have been living together as husband and wife ever since”. Two limbs, and the second is the one people overlook: a ceremony followed by five years apart is not this route.
• (b) “neither party has at the time of registration more than one spouse living”.
• (c) “neither party is an idiot or a lunatic at the time of registration”. The statutory language is of 1954 and is offensive to a modern ear; the point underneath it is capacity, and it is the same point the Hindu Marriage Act makes in section 5(ii).
• (d) “the parties have completed the age of twenty-one years at the time of registration”. Both of them. See section 3 below — this is the condition that surprises people most.
• (e) “the parties are not within the degree of prohibited relationship”, with a proviso for a marriage celebrated before the Act commenced, where the condition is “subject to any law, custom or usage having the force of law governing each of them which permits of a marriage between the two”.
• (f) “the parties have been residing within the district of the Marriage Officer for a period of not less than thirty days immediately preceding the date on which the application is made”. See section 3 below for this one too.

Read that list again and notice what is not in it. No religion. No conversion. No caste. No consent of parents. No requirement that the original ceremony was performed by any particular officiant or in any particular building. Chapter III is the statute’s way of saying: you are already married; let us put it on the record.

3. The two conditions that catch people — both 21, and thirty days in the district

Four of the six conditions in section 15 are the ones everybody expects. Two are not, and between them they account for most of the Chapter III applications that fail.

Condition (d): both parties must have completed twenty-one years

Under the Hindu Marriage Act, section 5(iii), the bride must have completed eighteen and the groom twenty-one. Under Chapter III of the Special Marriage Act, section 15(d) requires that “the parties have completed the age of twenty-one years at the time of registration” — both of them, and measured not at the wedding but at the time of registration.

So a couple married at a ceremony when the bride was nineteen, entirely lawfully if the Hindu Marriage Act governed them, cannot use Chapter III until she has completed twenty-one. The marriage is not affected; the registration route is simply not available yet. That is a real wait, and nobody can shorten it. What you can do in the meantime is keep the evidence of the ceremony safe and in order, which is the subject of section 9.

Condition (f): thirty days’ residence in the Marriage Officer’s district

This one is misread in both directions, so read the words carefully. Section 15(f) requires that “the parties have been residing within the district of the Marriage Officer for a period of not less than thirty days immediately preceding the date on which the application is made”.

• It says “the parties” — not “either party”. This is a stricter condition than the one a lot of counter advice assumes, and it is a genuine difference from the solemnisation route in Chapter II, which turns on either party having resided in the district for thirty days.
• It says residing, not owning. A rented flat in a Paschim Vihar society is residence. A flat in your mother’s name that you live in is residence.
• It is thirty days immediately before the application — a continuous period ending at the application, not thirty days at some point in the past.

For a settled Paschim Vihar couple living in the same colony this condition is usually trivial and already satisfied by the time anyone thinks about it. For a couple who have just moved back from Bengaluru or Dubai, or where one has moved into the other’s flat last week, it is a date to count carefully before paying anybody a fee.

4. How a Chapter III registration actually runs — notice, objections, refusal, appeal

People assume that because the marriage already happened, registering it is a counter transaction. It is not. Chapter III has its own procedure, and the procedure is public.

Section 16 — the application, the public notice, and the thirty days

On an application by both parties, section 16 requires the Marriage Officer to “give public notice thereof in such manner as may be prescribed” and, after allowing “a period of thirty days for objections”, to enter a certificate of the marriage in the Marriage Certificate Book if satisfied that all the conditions in section 15 are fulfilled.

So yes: there is a thirty-day public notice on this route as well. Anybody who sells Chapter III to you as the way to avoid the notice is misleading you. What it avoids is a conversion and a second wedding, not publicity.

• The clock starts at the notice, not the application. Ask, on the day you apply, what date the notice was published and what date the thirty days end. Write both down.
• Thirty days is for objections — it is not a cooling-off period imposed on you and it is not negotiable downwards because your file is strong.
• At the end of it the Officer must be satisfied that all six conditions in section 15 are met. That is why the evidence of the ceremony and of the thirty days’ residence has to be in the file on day one and not produced in week five.

What an objection can and cannot be about

An objection has to be an objection to the conditions in section 15. “We do not approve” is not one. “Her family has not consented” is not one — parental consent appears nowhere in section 15 and no form has a column for it. The things that are capable of being objections are the statutory conditions themselves: that no ceremony was performed, that the parties have not been living together as husband and wife ever since, that one has more than one spouse living, that one is under twenty-one, that they are within the prohibited degrees, or that the thirty days’ residence is not made out.

Section 17 — refusal, and the appeal that has a deadline

If the Marriage Officer refuses to register the marriage under this Chapter, you are not finished and you are not at anyone’s mercy. Section 17 provides that any person aggrieved by an order of a Marriage Officer refusing to register a marriage under this Chapter may, within thirty days from the date of the order, appeal to the district court within whose local limits the Officer’s office is situate, and that the decision of the district court on such appeal shall be final.

• Thirty days, from the date of the order. Not from when you understood it, not from when somebody finally gave you a copy. So the first thing to do on a refusal is to get the order in writing, with its date, and keep it.
• It goes to the district court — which is, note, the one place where a Delhi court does have something to do with your marriage: not registering it, but hearing an appeal against a refusal to register it.
• The decision is final. That cuts both ways, and it is a reason to put the appeal together properly rather than quickly.

5. What section 18 actually does — and the date it gives you

This is the part of Chapter III that nobody explains, and it is the single most important thing to understand before you choose this route.

Section 18 provides that where a certificate of marriage has been finally entered in the Marriage Certificate Book under this Chapter, the marriage shall, “as from the date of such entry”, be deemed to be a marriage solemnised under the Act — subject to the provisions of section 24(2), and with a proviso that nothing in the section confers on any such children any rights in or to the property of any person other than their parents.

Why that matters, in practical terms

• Dates on forms. Where a form asks for your date of marriage and your certificate carries a registration date, you will be asked about the gap. The answer is simple and you should have it ready: the ceremony was on one date, the registration under Chapter III was entered on another, and section 18 is why. Carry the evidence of the ceremony with the certificate, always, as a pair.
• Anything that runs from a date. Entitlements, nominations and benefits that turn on how long you have been married can read the register date rather than the ceremony date. We are not going to pretend to tell you how a particular department or insurer will read it — that depends on their own rules and we do not do service-rules, pension, insurance or succession work.
• The law that governs your marriage afterwards. A marriage registered under Chapter III is deemed to be a marriage solemnised under the Special Marriage Act, and that has consequences beyond the certificate. This is squarely a question for an advocate, in your own facts, before you choose the route — not a question for a page on the internet and not one we will answer with a confident generality.

And one thing section 18 does not do

It does not make your marriage retrospectively invalid for the period before the entry. You were married. A ceremony was performed and you have been living together as husband and wife ever since — that is literally condition (a) of section 15, which the Officer had to be satisfied about in order to register you at all. Nobody should be telling you that you were “not properly married” until the register was signed, and if a counter says it, it is wrong.

6. The four routes side by side

By this point a reader in Paschim Vihar reasonably wants one table. Here it is, and the right-hand column is the one to read first.

And the route nobody should sell you: a conversion, so that row one becomes available. No Indian marriage law requires anyone to change their religion to marry, the Special Marriage Act exists precisely so that nobody has to, and a service that proposes a conversion as a paperwork convenience is proposing to restructure your life to simplify its own week. We do not arrange conversions, full stop. Where a conversion is genuinely contemplated for reasons of belief, it has its own law in some States — Uttar Pradesh requires a sixty-day declaration under section 8 of its 2021 Act, Haryana has a 2022 Act — and that is a question for an advocate.

7. The thirty days as a calendar problem — and the three-month trap in section 14

Both Special Marriage Act routes have a thirty-day notice in them. Almost everything that goes wrong with either route is a calendar mistake rather than a legal one, so this section is arithmetic.

Count from the notice, not from your visit

The thirty days run from the date the notice is published, which is not necessarily the day you walked in with your file. If something in the application is short and you come back three days later, the clock starts on the later date. So on the day the notice goes up, get two dates in writing or at least write them in your own phone: the date of publication and the date the thirty days expire.

The trap: section 14, and three calendar months

This is the one that costs couples an entire cycle, and it applies to the solemnisation route under Chapter II. Section 14 provides that where a marriage is not solemnised within three calendar months from the date on which notice was given, “the notice and all other proceedings arising therefrom shall be deemed to have lapsed”, and no Marriage Officer shall solemnise the marriage until a new notice has been given.

What this means for two people in private jobs

Paschim Vihar is a colony of salaried households, and the real constraint on most couples here is leave, not law. So here is the honest shape of the calendar, with who has to be physically present at each step.

So: two half-days each, a thirty-day wait, and a three-month outer limit on the solemnisation route. Anybody quoting you “same day” for a Special Marriage Act marriage is either describing the Hindu Marriage Act registration route instead, or describing something that is not going to happen. Our page on what “tatkal” actually means is blunter about this than most people in this trade would like.

8. A society flat, a DDA flat and a builder floor — address proof in Paschim Vihar

Paschim Vihar is a society colony. Co-operative group housing societies and DDA flats dominate it, with builder floors filling in between — and that produces a specific, local, extremely common problem: the paper that proves where you live is often in the society’s name, or in a parent’s name, or in the name of the original allottee from the 1980s.

So, first, the two things that settle most of the worry:

• What is being proved is residence, not ownership. No marriage statute asks who owns the flat. Nothing in the Hindu Marriage Act, nothing in sections 15 to 18 of the Special Marriage Act, and nothing on any form turns on a sale deed, a conveyance, a GPA or a mutation.
• On the Hindu Marriage Act route, only one of you needs it. On the Chapter III route, read section 3 of this page again carefully — section 15(f) speaks of “the parties” residing in the district for thirty days, which is a stricter test, and in a Paschim Vihar colony it is also usually the easy one, because by the time you are registering a marriage you are generally living in the same flat.

What is commonly accepted

• An electricity, water, gas or landline bill at the flat, in either party’s name.
• A registered rent agreement, with the landlord’s own documents attached.
• A bank passbook or statement showing the address.
• Voter ID, passport, or driving licence carrying the address.
• Aadhaar updated to the current address.
• A society maintenance receipt or allotment letter, where the office accepts it — which is exactly why question three in section 1 of this page is worth asking on the telephone.

The three Paschim Vihar situations, answered

“The flat is in my father’s name and every bill says his name.” You live there; that is residence. Ordinarily the file carries the bill in his name together with a document of yours showing the same address — Aadhaar, voter ID, a bank statement, a passbook. Some offices additionally accept a short declaration from the owner that you reside there. Ask on the telephone which combination that office prefers, and take both.

“It is a society flat and the electricity meter is in the society’s name, not any flat’s.” Common in the older blocks, and the answer is the same shape: pair whatever the society issues you — a maintenance receipt, a share certificate, an allotment or possession letter, a letter from the society’s secretary — with a personal document of yours bearing the same address. This is the single most useful thing to confirm in advance for this colony, because practice differs between offices and a wasted trip here costs you a working day.

“We are renting a builder floor and moved in six weeks ago.” Then the registered rent agreement plus a bill or a bank statement at the new address is your proof, and your real question is the thirty days, not the paper. Six weeks is past thirty days; four weeks is not. Count from the day you actually began living there, and if the agreement is dated later than the move, be ready to say so honestly rather than to tidy it up.

9. Documents, witnesses, and the evidence of the first wedding

For each of you, on any route

• Age proof — matriculation certificate, birth certificate or passport. Aadhaar alone is not age proof and offices increasingly say so out loud. On the Chapter III route this is doing double duty, because section 15(d) needs both of you at twenty-one or above at the time of registration.
• Identity proof — Aadhaar, passport, voter ID or driving licence.
• Residence proof — see section 8. One party on the Hindu Marriage Act route; read section 15(f) carefully on Chapter III.
• Passport-size photographs, several more than you expect to need, plus a joint photograph.
• Separate affidavits from each of you — not one joint affidavit — setting out date, place and manner of the ceremony, your marital status, and that the statutory conditions are met.
• Where relevant: a divorce decree, or a previous spouse’s death certificate. Carry the decree itself, not a lawyer’s letter about it.

On the Chapter III route, the file has a second half

Condition (a) of section 15 asks the Marriage Officer to be satisfied of two things: that a ceremony of marriage has been performed, and that you have been living together as husband and wife ever since. Those are findings of fact, and findings of fact need material.

• For the ceremony: photographs of the rites themselves (not only the stage and the reception), the invitation card, and a signed statement from whoever officiated — full name, father’s name, address, telephone number, the date, the place and a description of what was performed. If the officiant is traceable today and may not be in ten years, get this now.
• For “ever since”: the ordinary paper trail of a shared life at one address — a joint bank account or a statement showing both names, both of you on a society or utility record, a rent agreement in both names, insurance or employer records naming the other as spouse, letters and parcels delivered to the two of you at the same flat.

Witnesses

For a Chapter II solemnisation the Act requires three witnesses before the Marriage Officer. For a Hindu Marriage Act registration it is ordinarily two. On the Chapter III route the witnesses who matter most are the people who can speak to the ceremony and to your living together — and the useful criterion is not seniority but findability. Each witness attends in person with their own original identity and address proof. A photocopy of an uncle’s Aadhaar is not a witness.

10. Privacy, objections, and what a relative can actually do

Because both Special Marriage Act routes publish a notice, this is the section people in settled colonies care about most. Paschim Vihar is a place where the society office knows everyone and the market is three blocks wide, and the fear is specific: who will see this, and what can they do about it?

What the notice does and does not expose

• It is a notice at the office, in the prescribed manner — not an advertisement, not a newspaper insertion, and nothing is posted to your family’s address or to your employer. Nobody is informed. The notice sits where notices sit, and whoever goes looking can read it.
• The Hindu Marriage Act registration route has no public notice at all. If both of you fall within section 2 of that Act and you have already had a ceremony, this entire worry does not apply to you. That is a reason to read row one of the table in section 6 before you choose anything.
• An objection must engage the statutory conditions. On Chapter III, that means the six conditions in section 15 and nothing else. Disapproval is not an objection. “Her parents have not agreed” is not an objection. “They are from different communities” is not an objection — it is the precise situation the Act was written for.
• A refusal is appealable, with a deadline. Section 17: thirty days from the date of the order, to the district court, and the decision is final. Get the order in writing on the day.

The everyday leak points, which are not the notice

In practice the notice is almost never how families find out. These are:

• A shared mobile number on the application, or a number on a family plan where somebody else sees the messages.
• A shared email address, or one whose recovery number belongs to a parent.
• A WhatsApp thread with a service that somebody else can read on a shared phone or a desktop login.
• Location sharing left on, on the morning of an appointment.
• A photocopy shop in your own market. Jwala Heri is three minutes away and so is everyone you know. Use one further out, or take the documents home.

Close those and you have closed ninety per cent of the real exposure. Our guide on registering a marriage without family pressure goes through each one properly.

If disapproval becomes interference

We are a documentation service and we do not do police work or protection petitions, and we are not going to dress ourselves up as something more. But you should know what exists, because an advocate can act on it quickly.

In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, (2018) 7 SCC 192, decided 27 March 2018, the Supreme Court held that an adult’s right to marry a person of their choice is absolute and that an assembly gathering to condemn a lawful marriage between consenting adults is itself illegal. It issued preventive, remedial and punitive directions — among them a safe house at each District Headquarters, a Special Cell, a twenty-four hour helpline, immediate registration of an FIR where a diktat is issued, engagement by an officer of DSP rank with video recording, the use of sections 144 and 151 CrPC where needed, police assistance for the marriage and for its registration, and fast-track trials to be concluded within six months. Earlier, in Lata Singh v. State of U.P., (2006) 5 SCC 475, the Court was equally plain that an adult is free to marry whom she chooses. These are not favours anybody grants you.

11. What it costs, line by line

Three separate lines, always, and the government’s money kept visibly apart from ours. If anybody gives you one number with everything folded inside it, you cannot tell what you are paying for, which is generally the point.

Three honest situations

• Both of you within HMA section 2, ceremony already done, documents clean. You do not need a service. Prepare the affidavits, carry the file, pay the government fee. Our charge: nothing. We will say this on the first call and we say it several times a week.
• Chapter III: two faiths, a wedding already held, both over twenty-one. This is where the ₹6,100 line earns itself honestly, because the file has two halves — the ordinary documents, and the evidence of the ceremony and of living together since — and because a refusal costs you a thirty-day cycle and possibly a section 17 appeal.
• No wedding yet and you want the civil route. Chapter II solemnisation: thirty days’ notice, three witnesses, a three-month outer limit under section 14. The work is the calendar discipline, not the paperwork.

12. What it realistically takes, and the practical morning

The honest timeline

• HMA section 8 registration, clean file: a day to assemble, a notary visit, an appointment, and the certificate. The statutory window is sixty days from the marriage under Delhi’s 2014 Order; after that ₹500, then ₹1,000 with an ADM waiver available for reasonable cause.
• SMA Chapter II solemnisation: notice, thirty days, solemnisation — and not later than three calendar months from the notice, or section 14 lapses it.
• SMA Chapter III registration: application by both parties, public notice, thirty days for objections, then the entry in the Marriage Certificate Book if the Officer is satisfied on all six conditions. Budget for the file taking longer to prepare than to process, because the evidence of the ceremony is usually scattered across three phones and a cupboard.

The practical morning

• Go early. The first hour of a sub-divisional office is worth two of the third.
• Originals and two sets of self-attested photocopies, in one folder, in the order of the form. Not a phone gallery.
• Witnesses with their own originals, and told the day before, not that morning.
• Everybody’s own pen. It sounds trivial until four people are waiting for one.
• Pay the government fee yourself and keep the receipt in your own name. If anybody suggests paying it on your behalf in cash without a receipt, that is the end of that conversation.
• Read the certificate before you leave the room. Both names letter by letter against the age proof, the parents’ names, the date, the place. A correction at the desk takes two minutes; a correction in 2034 takes an affidavit, a visit and an explanation.
• Take three or four certified copies at once — bank, employer, passport office, insurer.

13. Situations we see from Paschim Vihar and West Delhi

Patterns, described without identifying anybody. If one of these is yours, the answer inside it is the answer we would give you on the telephone.

“We had a wedding four years ago. She is Hindu, I am Christian. Two offices have sent us away.”

This is the Chapter III case, and it is the reason this page exists. You do not convert and you do not re-marry. The application is under section 15: a ceremony was performed, you have been living together as husband and wife ever since, neither has more than one spouse living, both of you have completed twenty-one, you are not within the prohibited degrees, and both of you have been residing in the district for thirty days. Then section 16: public notice, thirty days for objections, and the entry. Prepare the second half of the file properly — photographs of the rites, the card, the officiant’s signed statement, and the ordinary paper trail of a shared address — because that is what the Officer has to be satisfied about.

“Chapter III sounds right but she turns twenty-one in August.”

Then you wait until August, and nobody can shorten it. Section 15(d) requires that both parties have completed twenty-one at the time of registration — which is also the good news, because the test is applied then and not at your wedding, so time cures it on its own. Use the months to collect the evidence while the officiant is still traceable and the phones still have the videos on them.

“We filed the notice in January, then my posting came through and we missed the date.”

If this was a Chapter II solemnisation and three calendar months have passed from the notice, section 14 has lapsed it — the notice and all the proceedings arising from it — and a new notice is required. It is frustrating and it is not a punishment; it is the section. File the fresh notice and this time put both dates in your calendar: thirty days at the early end, three months at the far end.

“The electricity meter is in the society’s name and there is no bill with our flat number.”

Very common in the older Paschim Vihar blocks. Pair whatever the society issues — a maintenance receipt, a share certificate, an allotment or possession letter, a letter from the secretary — with a personal document of yours carrying the same address, and telephone the office first to ask which combination it prefers. What is being proved is residence, not ownership, and no marriage law anywhere asks who owns the flat.

“Somebody told us the sub-division changed and our old office does not cover us any more.”

Possibly true, and worth five minutes rather than an argument. The revenue map was reorganised with effect from 1 January 2026 — thirteen districts, thirty-nine sub-divisions — and Paschim Vihar historically sat under the Punjabi Bagh sub-division of the old West district. Telephone, read the address exactly as printed, and ask the four questions in section 1. What you do not have to do is update any document because a district was renamed.

“We were refused, and nobody will give us anything in writing.”

Ask for the order in writing, politely and in those words, because section 17 gives you thirty days from the date of the order to appeal to the district court, and the limitation runs from that date rather than from when you were told. Then take it to an advocate. We will tell you honestly what we think the file is worth, but an appeal is court work and we do not do court work.

“An agent has offered to get it done in two days for forty thousand.”

On a Special Marriage Act file that is not possible, because the thirty days is in the statute and not in the queue. On a Hindu Marriage Act registration a clean file can genuinely move quickly, and it does not cost forty thousand. Ask for the three lines in writing — government fee, service fee, anything else — and watch what happens to the number.

“Her family is threatening to object at the office.”

An objection has to engage the statutory conditions, and disapproval is not one of them. Parental consent appears nowhere in section 15, nowhere in section 5 of the Hindu Marriage Act, and on no form. If the threat goes beyond words, Shakti Vahini is the authority and the directions in it are specific — see section 10. An advocate can move on them within a day. We cannot, and we will not pretend we can.

“We are both employed and cannot keep taking leave.”

Then plan around the table in section 7. Two half-days each is the realistic figure: the filing and the solemnisation or entry are the two steps where both of you must be physically present, and collecting copies afterwards can be done by one of you. Nobody can attend in your place on a power of attorney — that is one thing a power of attorney cannot do.

14. What we do not do

Most of what goes wrong in this trade is not incompetence. It is a service saying yes to something it should have refused. So here is the list in public, where you can hold us to it.

• We do not arrange conversions. Not to make a route simpler, not to make a file faster. The Special Marriage Act exists precisely so nobody has to, and Chapter III exists for couples who are already married across faiths.
• We do not backdate anything, and we do not certify a ceremony we did not perform.
• We do not supply witnesses.
• We do not manufacture residence — no rent agreement for an address nobody lives at, no bill arranged in a name.
• We do not promise to shorten the thirty days, because it is in the statute.
• We do not guarantee a government outcome, a date or a timeline, because nobody can.
• We do not proceed without real age proof for both parties — and on Chapter III that means both of you at twenty-one or above.
• We do not touch dowry in any form or under any name. Where cash, jewellery, a vehicle or property is demanded or given as a condition of the marriage, that is dowry, and giving, taking and demanding it are all offences under the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961. Tilak, shagun, neg and “custom” are labels, not exceptions.
• We do not do court work — no appeals under section 17, no protection petitions, no police work.
• We do not do visa, immigration, property, succession, pension, insurance or service-rules work, and we will not tell you how a department will read a section 18 registration date. Those are questions for an advocate in your own facts.
• We publish no reviews, ratings or testimonials. There is no star rating anywhere on this site and there never will be. Ask us questions instead.

15. The one-page checklist for a Paschim Vihar couple

Before you choose a route

• Are both of you within HMA section 2 (which expressly includes Buddhists, Jainas and Sikhs), and has a ceremony already been performed? If yes, HMA section 8 registration — no public notice, your wedding date on the record. Stop here.
• Was it an Anand Karaj? Read the Rajouri Garden page — the Anand Marriage Act 1909, section 6, with Delhi’s Rules of 9 February 2018.
• Already married, different faiths, HMA closed to you? SMA Chapter III, sections 15 to 18.
• Not married yet and you want the civil route? SMA Chapter II solemnisation.

If you are going the Chapter III route, check all six

• A ceremony was performed and you have been living together as husband and wife ever since — and you can show both.
• Neither of you has more than one spouse living.
• Capacity, at the time of registration.
• Both of you have completed twenty-one — measured at registration.
• You are not within the prohibited degrees.
• Both of you have been residing in the district for thirty days immediately before the application. Count it. Put the earliest application date in your phone.

Before you travel

• Telephone the office and ask the four questions in section 1 — which sub-division today, is the marriage counter there, what it accepts for a society flat, and how appointments are taken.
• Do not update any document because a district was renamed. Your address has not moved.
• Fix one spelling of each name, taken from the age proof.
• Get the affidavits notarised separately — one each, not one joint.

On the day of the notice or application

• Both of you attend. Nobody can attend in your place.
• Write down the date of publication and the date the thirty days end.
• On a Chapter II notice, also write down the three-month date — section 14 lapses the notice after three calendar months.

At the solemnisation or the entry

• Three witnesses for a Chapter II solemnisation; ordinarily two for an HMA registration. Each with their own originals, in person.
• Pay the government fee yourself and keep the receipt in your name.
• Read the certificate letter by letter before you leave the room.
• Take three or four certified copies at once.
• On a Chapter III registration, keep the evidence of the ceremony with the certificate as a pair — because section 18 dates the statutory marriage from the entry, and the ceremony date is a question you will be asked.