All Court Marriage Services and Guides in Delhi

Start with one question, not with a page

Most people arrive here and start reading whichever page ranked first. That is the slow way round, because the two things people call "court marriage" are different legal acts with different timelines, and half of what you read will not apply to you.

Has your wedding already taken place?

If yes - a ceremony with a pandit, at an Arya Samaj mandir, in a gurdwara, by nikah, in a church - then the marriage already exists in law. Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 provides that where the rites include saptapadi, the marriage is complete and binding on the seventh step. What you need is the government certificate, under section 8 of that Act read with the Delhi (Compulsory Registration of Marriage) Order, 2014. There is no notice period, no publication and no objection stage, and where the file is complete it takes days. Start at marriage registration.

If no - and you want a marriage without any religious ceremony, or the two of you are of different faiths - then you are solemnising under the Special Marriage Act, 1954. One of you needs thirty days' residence in the district before the notice, the notice is public for thirty days, and the marriage happens on or after the thirty-first day. Start at court marriage in Delhi or the Special Marriage Act page.

If you want a ceremony and a fast certificate and both of you are Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Sikh, the Arya Samaj route is the third possibility - a ceremony on the day, followed by registration.

Answer that one question and roughly two-thirds of this index stops being relevant to you, which is the point.

What everything actually costs

Fees are the most misreported thing in this subject, so here are the published figures with their sources. The Delhi Revenue Department states on its own marriage registration page that a fee of Rs 15 is to be deposited with the cashier of the District for solemnisation under the Special Marriage Act, and a fee of Rs 100 with the Marriage Clerk for registration under the Hindu Marriage Act. Clause 4 of the Delhi (Compulsory Registration of Marriage) Order, 2014 sets Rs 200 for the Form A application under that Order.

All three are genuine and belong to different procedures. None of them is a four-figure government fee. If you have been quoted two or three thousand rupees as a "government charge", that figure does not appear anywhere in the department's published material.

Real costs beyond the government fee do exist - stamp paper and notarisation for the affidavits, photographs, a certified copy of a divorce decree from the court's copying agency, and a professional fee for professional work. Those are legitimate. They are simply not government fees, and an honest quote separates them. Our fees page itemises it, and the full cost breakdown goes line by line.

The one four-figure government charge is clause 10 of the Delhi Order: an optional priority facility for registration in case of urgency, on an additional fee of Rs 10,000. It is real, voluntary and receipted - and it does not shorten a statutory notice period, because nothing can. See the tatkal page.

How long each route really takes

Timelines get oversold more than anything except fees, so here is the honest position on each.

Special Marriage Act solemnisation: thirty-one days minimum. Sections 5, 6 and 7 make the notice period statutory, and section 46 makes a Marriage Officer who knowingly and wilfully solemnises inside it punishable with imprisonment which may extend to one year, or a fine, or both. That is why no office bends. Anyone promising a same-day Special Marriage Act marriage is promising an offence.

And there is a back end to that clock nobody mentions. Section 14 provides that if the marriage is not solemnised within three calendar months of the date the notice was given, the notice and all proceedings arising from it lapse, and a fresh notice is needed - restarting the whole thirty days. Couples who file early and then postpone pay twice. See the notice period in full.

Registration of an existing marriage: days. Where the file is complete this is quick, and some offices complete it the same day. Clause 4(a) of the Delhi Order gives you sixty days from the marriage; clause 6 allows condonation of up to sixty further days on Rs 500; clause 7 imposes a Rs 1,000 penalty beyond that, remittable by the Additional District Magistrate or District Magistrate. Being late is a fee and a form, not a bar - section 8(5) of the Hindu Marriage Act confirms the marriage stays valid.

Arya Samaj: ceremony the same day, registration afterwards. See what same-day actually means.

If an objection is filed on the Special Marriage Act route, section 8 gives the Marriage Officer no more than thirty days to inquire and decide, and section 8(2) gives a further thirty days to appeal to the district court. So the realistic worst case on that route is a couple of months, not an open-ended wait. The objections page sets out the machinery.

Documents: the two things people get wrong

Whichever route you take, two document problems cause the overwhelming majority of wasted mornings, and both are visible at your own table the night before.

Age proof is a short list. The Delhi Revenue Department names three documents: the matriculation certificate, the passport, or the birth certificate. Aadhaar is not on it. Aadhaar is good identity and address evidence and belongs in your file - just not as your proof of age. If neither of you holds one of the three, that is a weeks-long problem: see the age proof guide for the delayed birth registration route under section 13(3) of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969.

Your own documents must agree with each other. A name spelt two ways, a surname present on one document and absent on another, or a date of birth that differs - each of these stalls a file, and the fix takes about two weeks rather than an afternoon. The mismatch guide covers the five classic ones.

For residence, the department lists voter I-card, ration card, driving licence or passport. On the Special Marriage Act route it additionally asks for documentary evidence of one party's stay in Delhi for more than thirty days - if you rent, see residence proof for tenants.

The consolidated checklist for every route is on the documents page, and the walkthrough of the day itself lists the fifteen commonest reasons a file gets sent back.

Where to go: the office depends on where you live

Delhi's revenue map was redrawn with effect from 1 January 2026. Eleven districts became thirteen and thirty-three sub-divisions became thirty-nine. Old Delhi, Central North and Outer North were created; Shahdara ceased to be a district and survives as a sub-division of North East.

Seven sub-division names that everyone used last year are gone from the list: Chanakyapuri, Vasant Vihar, Civil Lines, Kotwali, Alipur, Saraswati Vihar and Kanjhawala. Four others changed district. Almost every guide still online sends people to offices under the old map.

The Revenue Department's jurisdiction rule for registration is residence-based: apply to the office in whose territorial jurisdiction either applicant resides. Where the marriage was solemnised in Delhi but the applicants do not live in Delhi, the application goes to the office of the district of solemnisation. And clause 5 of the Delhi Order gives the SDM (Head Quarter), the Additional District Magistrate and the District Magistrate concurrent jurisdiction over the entire NCT, so nobody can be left without an office.

We have written a page for every current sub-division. Use the area directory above, or go to the full area index. The complete district map is published as a reference table on the 2026 district map page.

How we work

We are a Delhi legal documentation practice. Court marriage, Arya Samaj marriage and marriage registration are the whole of what we do, which is why this site has a page for every sub-division and every situation rather than one generic guide.

What we actually provide is not speed - no one can lawfully compress a statutory notice - but getting the route and the file right the first time, because the expensive part of this process is doing it twice. We settle which route your situation calls for, find the problems before the counter does, prepare the file and the affidavits, tell you the real timeline, and say no to what cannot be done.

Our fee is quoted to you as a figure, in writing, before anything is filed, and separately from the government fee, so you can always see which is which and you always get the government receipt. That is the test we would tell you to apply to anybody in this field, including us - and our page on spotting a false promise explains why.

To get a straight answer quickly, send four things on WhatsApp: both ages, whether a wedding ceremony has already taken place, whether either of you was married before, and which locality in Delhi you live in. That is enough for us to tell you the route, the realistic timeline and what your file needs - usually the same day, at no cost.