If you want to marry in Australia you need to fill in and lodge with your celebrant a Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) between one and 18 months before your wedding date. You can find this document here.
Whether you are based in Australia or overseas, you must lodge your NOIM with your Celebrant during this period.
You can lodge this once it has been witnessed, either by handing the hard copy to your celebrant, by sending an electronic copy, or by posting a hard copy in the post.
The form itself is reasonably straight forward, however, often couples make mistakes. It is worth reading the guidance below to help you avoid these.
GENERAL POINTS
Write neatly and use capital letters. Or, if your writing is a bit tricky to read, type the information.
If you make a mistake, don’t use white-out. Cross the mistake out once with a line, initial it, and write the correct information next to it
Do not sign until you are in front of your witness, and, if you’re not using a celebrant as your witness, make sure the person you choose is eligible to witness the document. The only eligible witnesses in Australia are:
Authorised celebrant
A Commissioner for Declarations
A Justice of the Peace
A barrister or solicitor
A legally qualified medical practitioner
A member of the Australian Federal Police or police force of State/Territory
MISTAKES MADE ON SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
Question 3: Usual Occupation
Sometimes people will write ‘administration’ or ‘army’. Think of the following: if someone asked you what you do for a living, you wouldn’t answer ‘I am an administration’ or ‘I am an army’. Therefore you need to write ‘administration assistant’ or ‘soldier’.
Question 5: Conjugal Status
If you’ve never been married then you need to write the words ‘never validly married’ (not ‘never married’)
Question 10: Mother’s Maiden Name
This question is sometimes misunderstood; it requires your mother’s first, middle and her last name at birth.
ANY QUESTIONS
If you have any questions about filling in your NOIM, please contact TMK here. We're happy to help.
SUBMITTING YOUR NOIM
Once your NOIM is signed, witnessed and fully completed, you can submit it to The Marrying Kind by scanning it, then emailing to us at tmkcelebrants@gmail.com