Major Shift in Danish Weddings (Update April 1, 2025)
Major Shift in Danish Weddings (Update April 1, 2025)
In the past couple of weeks, we have seen a significant change in the availability of ceremony slots at the town halls in Denmark. It has happened very quickly, and it has become a problem that we have never previously encountered at this time of year.
At the moment, the worst effect of this is being seen at Copenhagen City Hall. Here, we are finding that very little is available for couples during their 4-month approval period.
But because Copenhagen City Hall is full, other town halls are also starting to become booked up for the next 2 months ahead.
We will continue to update this article as we get new information.
Why Has This Happened?
The critical shift started back in November when the Danish Agency of Family Law from one day to another announced that, instead of 5 to 6-month waiting time for a reply on an application that had not been approved in the first round, they would now respond in 1 to 2 weeks.
This meant that many applications were approved very quickly, all within a short period of time, and many of these couples had chosen Copenhagen city hall as the location for their wedding.
Combined with a general decline in ceremonies available over the last year, some town halls, like Frederiksberg, Maribo, and Slagelse, have almost entirely stopped offering ceremonies to international couples.
Other town halls, such as Stevns, Esbjerg/Ribe, and Kolding, have drastically lowered the number of ceremony slots available.
Immediate Impact for Couples
In short: Having a very specific timeline will make things very complicated and risky.
In Copenhagen City Hall, very little is available for couples during their 4-month approval period.
To illustrate the issue in Copenhagen right now, let’s try to break down the booking process:
- You choose Copenhagen City Hall on your application
- Application is submitted.
- You get your approval with a validity of 4 months (if applicable).
- You go to book a date using the city hall booking system, and if you’re lucky, one or two dates show availability. These dates are right at the very end of your four-month validity period.
Essentially, a new day’s available slots are released every day, and those slots are booked up within a day, sometimes within two or three days. (Saturdays always get booked up super quickly.)
However, as your validity period is fixed from the day of approval, any new days added after your approval will be outside of your validity period and, therefore, not available for you.
What about the other town halls
As you can imagine, this directly impacts the availability at all the other town halls, especially those close to Copenhagen. In particular; Roskilde, Dragør and Helsingør.
The marriage offices here are are bursting with marriage date requests and the availability is changing on a daily, almost hourly basis.
For example, on 28th February, mid-March, wedding ceremonies at Roskilde town hall were still available to book.
By 27th March (only one month later), all of April, and May were fully booked, with only a few days left with availability in June.
We are seeing similar situations at the other more well-known town halls, such as Tønder, Kolding, and Aabenraa too, to name a few.
What about changing the town hall?
So, applying at one town hall and, if there is no availability, moving your approval to a different town hall to get your desired time frame seems like a good choice, right?
Unfortunately, not. Because so many couples are finding out upon approval that there is no available space left at the town hall they chose during the time frame they want, the number of requests the Agency of Family Law receives for town hall approval file transfers has increased dramatically.
While approval transfers took a matter of days to be completed at the beginning of 2025, they are now currently taking 6 to 8 weeks.
The AFL does not prioritise approval transfers, nor does it allow couples or agencies to ‘hurry along’ the request to have an approval moved from one town hall to another.
In addition, you cannot book a date at a town hall until the AFL has sent your approval there.
Long-Term Effects
At the moment it does look like a negative spiral, where couples are able to get an approval but not be able to book a ceremony within the validity period they are given. We are not completely there yet, but it is a potential reality we are all facing.
If we look at the core of the current situation then it’s that the town halls are cutting down on funding for registrars.
Now if the town halls were able to charge a fee for an international couples town hall ceremony, then the funding of the registrars would not be the same expense as it is now.
We will do what we can to see if we can make this possible and we believe that the Danish wedding industry will continue to thrive, but it will be a changed version of the one we have been very used to.
Recommended Actions
We are here to advise you to the best of our ability as you move through this process. But our advice centres around 2 main points:
- Be flexible with your time frame
- Understand that no specific date can currently be guaranteed at any town hall, let alone the most popular ones.
Availability changes daily, and sometimes even hourly so be flexible – it greatly improves your chances of getting married.
- Be open to alternative locations
- Some town halls still have relatively good availability, particularly those that are further away from Copenhagen. If timing is critical (for instance, if your visa is expiring), then you must be ready to accept our recommendations for alternative locations.
Denmark is a small country and the transport infrastructure is clean, reliable and more effortless to navigate than it might appear on paper.
Can GMID Secure Us A Ceremony Date Now?
Actually, yes.
We collaborate with a trusted wedding planning agency on the island of Ærø where we are able to offer between 4-6 ceremony slots a week at their private location outside the town hall.
We designed this as an option for couples whose time frame is very limited and you require security throughout the process.
There is still fairly good availability on these but please make sure to ask your wedding consultant for more information.
We will continue to monitor the developments closely and keep you informed as more details emerge. Stay tuned for further updates.
Want to learn more about previous changes to the Danish Wedding Industry? Read here why the Agency of family law was introduced.
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