How to Secure your Marriage Certificate earlier than 6 months

Hi there! If you recently got married, you might have recently figured out that:

1. updating your status in important documents in some institutions require you to present your marriage certificate.

2. the 'OCRG' (Office of the Civil Registrar General) marriage certificate which you have (handed to you probably by your church/pastor) is different from the 'PSA' (Philippine Statistics Authority) marriage certificate. The PSA issued marriage certificate is usually considered more legit. 

3. the marriage certificate will only be released 6 months after your wedding date as per standard operating procedure of the  (PSA) 

Six months is acceptable if the only reason you need proof of your marriage is to update your status/last name in important documents. Most institutions understand that your marriage certificate is not yet available and so they will ask for a certified true copy of your OCRG marriage certificate instead. 

However, for some couples, like us, who needed to have the marriage certificate as soon as possible for visa application purposes, six months is too long of a wait. I'm writing this post as a public service to couples who are looking for a way to expedite the process. And yes, you can do this without compromising your integrity and spending a huge amount of money. Here's an outline of the process (DISCLAIMER: This is the process I followed for PSA Baguio, based on my experience. I cannot guarantee that this is true for other PSA branches, but more or less, it should be pretty much the same.) 

SUMMARY:

OFFICE TO VISIT:

PSA [For Baguio, since we have two, proceed to the Provincial Branch at Legarda Road, (alongside Unique Printing Press)]

WHAT TO BRING:

- Original copy of OCRG marriage certificate

- Three (3) photocopies of OCRG marriage certificate

- Pen 

WHEN TO DO IT:

- As soon as possible after receiving the OCRG marriage certificate

PROCESSING TIME:

- Around 5-10 mins 

PROCESSING COST:

P0.00 

Here's our experience: 

My husband and I are both Filipinos but my husband is a Canadian citizen. We intend to live there and so we have started processing papers so that we could be together as soon as possible. One of the requirements for a spousal visa is the PSA issued marriage certificate, so when we heard that we had to wait for 6 months before securing ours, we were a bit disappointed. I asked around and googled how to speed up the process and found out that there's this thing called 'advanced endorsement'. 

Based on my research, the advanced endorsement was supposed to be requested at the Local Civil Registry (LCR) but when I inquired at their office, they told me that I had to do that at the PSA instead and simply present the OCRG marriage certificate. So I went to PSA Baguio, the branch across Heritage Mansion and proceeded to the customer service section, Counseling On Civil Registration Matters (CARE) and asked about it. The woman in charge at the time asked me the date I got married, checked our OCRG marriage certificate, checked something in her computer and said, yes, I can still request for advanced endorsement. (We got married July 27 and I requested this August 16. I guess this kind of implies that there might be a certain period after getting married that you can request for an endorsement? I'm not so sure about this, but it's safe to request for the endorsement immediately after getting married). She told me to go the PSA branch located at Legarda Rd and so I did. When I got there, I informed the man in charge that I wanted to request for an advanced endorsement for the marriage certificate. He asked me some details which I promptly answered, after which I asked him how much I have to pay for the process. I have to say, he was caught off guard, like he was surprised I even asked. He paused and told me, that there is no fee for this process. Yes, you read that right. It was free. He told me to prepare 3 photocopies of the OCRG marriage certificate and after a short while, he handed me this paper,

as my copy that it has been endorsed, and told me to follow up on Aug 31 at PSA-CARE section.

I actually thought that Aug 30, was the date written on the paper, and so I went today and was actually a day early. By God's grace though, it was already available. Hehe. 

TIMELINE:

July 27 - we got married

July 28 - we received our OCRG marriage certificate from our church

Aug 16 - requested for advanced endorsement

Aug 30 - received PSA issued marriage certificate 

We probably would've received it in less than a month if I requested earlier. 

I heard fixers/insiders usually ask for amounts as low as P500 to as high as P10000 (yes, it really does happen) to secure your marriage certificate for you in 2-3 weeks......but you don't really have to go through that. I did it the legal way and still got it within 2 weeks. It's easy, it's right and it doesn't have to cost you anything at all. All I paid for were the certificates themselves which were P140 each. Tiyaga lang talaga kailangan. :)

Anyway, that's it! I hope this helps. :)