TØNDER, Denmark — Claudia Brandt has officiated all manners of weddings. There was the couple who jointly sawed a piece of wood to test whether they could work together as husband and wife. Another couple ran to stamp on each other’s feet in a traditional race to see who’d be in charge in the marriage (the bride won). And then there was the kilt-wearing groom and his bus full of kilt-wearing groomsmen — not an unusual sight in Scotland but a bit rarer in the small Danish town of Tønder.
“During the ceremony, we need to see what kind of people we have in front of us,” says Brandt. “Some don’t shake hands and we need to respect that. At the wedding, some don’t kiss. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t love.”
Whether for love or not, in the course of the last year about 2,000 couples came through this Danish-German border town of about 7,000 people to tie the knot. Only 120 of the weddings were Danes getting hitched. The rest were couples from elsewhere in Europe and beyond, taking advantage of Denmark’s liberal marriage laws.
While couples getting married across the border in Germany have to wait a minimum of three months with officials requiring a slew of documents translated into German, Danish officials are fast, require less paperwork and are flexible about what language people use on their marriage applications. In Denmark, there’s often less than a week between the papers being submitted and “I do.”
The wedding chamber in Tønder | Saim Saeed/POLITICO
Tønder bills itself as “The Land of Love” and city officials have deftly capitalized on international wedding tourism. A rapid response team of four multilingual marriage registrars quickly verify marriage documents and respond fluently in either Danish, German or English.
A single registrar, who can conduct the ceremony in one of those languages, can marry as many as 12 couples in one day. The wedding certificate is issued in German, French, English, Spanish and Danish, and under EU law is valid everywhere in the bloc.
The previous mayor created an office dedicated to making it even easier for people to get married in Tønder but demand is high and the registrar needs even more staff and a bigger office to manage the many applications. Fortunately, city officials understand that weddings generate a lot of money for Tønder.
Tønder may seem like a small Las Vegas of the north. But don’t mention Sin City around these parts
“They are working to give us more staff,” says Bente Skipper, another registrar.
After a town hall-style consultation last year in which Tønder’s residents brainstormed ideas to help stimulate wedding tourism, a local mother-and-daughter team came up with A Danish Dream, an agency that offers express weddings from €300 as well as more expensive, elaborate packages that include hotel and restaurant reservations, a pre-ceremony trip to the hairdresser, a wedding cake, a photographer, and even a limo, making sure other local businesses benefit.
“In Tønder love blossoms every week, when couples from around the world gather to say yes to each other,” says the website.
Lionel, 23, from Colombia, and Svea, 20, from Germany. After maintaining a long-distance relationship for more than a year, the couple got married so that Lionel could stay in Germany for more than the 90 days his Schengen visa allows | Saim Saeed/POLITICO
The picturesque streets of Tønder bear witness to the bustling wedding industry. On the main pedestrian street is Denmark’s biggest bridal store, and photographers, hairdressers, florists and jewelers do brisk business, too.
Tønder may seem like a small Las Vegas of the north. But don’t mention Sin City around these parts.
“We have a good reputation,” said Tønder’s current mayor, Henrik Frandsen, firmly. “We are not the Las Vegas of Europe.”
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For years, Germans have taken advantage of the liberal marriage laws in Denmark and driven to Tønder for nuptials. Two couples, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said German public registrars had even advised them to go to Denmark for a quicker union.
The Schengen agreement, and the fact that Danish marriage certificates are accepted across the Union, have made Tønder an even more attractive destination for couples.
All couples require is an ID, proof of legal stay in the EU, such as a tourist visa, and a certificate that says they haven’t been married before. And among those who make the trip to Tønder, there are many non-Europeans who, by marrying an EU citizen, find a path to EU citizenship.
“We are very convinced that it is true love that brings them here” — Henrik Frandsen, mayor
Couples, however, aren’t allowed to stay in Denmark, even if one person in the couple is Danish. Under Denmark’s strict immigration law, such mixed couples have to prove significant “combined attachment” to Denmark.
When POLITICO visited the town recently, people from Colombia, the Philippines, Russia and Ghana were all saying their wedding vows to Europeans — all of them German.
Svea, a young German woman who spoke on condition that only her first name be used, was marrying her Colombian boyfriend Lionel. The couple had eloped to get secretly married in Tønder because Svea feared her parents’ disapproval and the couple saw no other way to stay together in Europe. Lionel had tried to find a job in Germany but had been unable to, he said, because his visa wouldn’t allow it and no one would sponsor him for a work permit.
Unhappy in a long-distance relationship, they decided to get married and found the Tønder registry online. Danish officials only required a copy of Lionel’s Schengen visa and a certificate that he isn’t already married. The couple drove to Tønder from Germany in a battered station wagon that they were also sleeping in and quickly went back to Germany to register their marriage and get Lionel his residence permit.
Bente Skipper has been a marriage registrar since 2011. On busy days, she marries up to a dozen couples | Saim Saeed/POLITICO
Not everyone is pleased that people are flocking to Tønder to get hitched. “You can’t have people shopping for the most convenient set of rules,” said Anders Vistisen, an MEP from the right-wing Danish People’s Party. “There needs to be a different way and a more rigorous set of regulations.”
But Frandsen says reports of “paper marriages” are exaggerated. “We are very convinced that it is true love that brings them here,” said Frandsen of the couples. “So we’re quite sad when we hear these accusations.”
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For some, Tønder is simply more convenient than getting married at home.
On a recent afternoon, a Rwandan-born, German-Belgian couple living outside Brussels had come to Tønder’s rustic wedding hall to tie the knot.
Marie Chantal Uwera, 35, was wearing a cream-colored dress with a scarf tied loosely around her shoulders. Her hair was neatly pulled in to a tight bun and she was holding a white bouquet. Her husband-to-be, Theogene Niyonsaba, 43, was wearing a slightly baggy black suit and matching tie.
The couple met 10 years ago, have two young children and are expecting a third. They decided against getting married in Belgium because of the bureaucracy. “They wanted us to produce a long list of documents,” Uwera said. “And we didn’t want to hire a lawyer, which would have cost us extra.” A health worker and a taxi driver, the couple couldn’t take time off and were racing back to Belgium as soon as the ceremony was over.
Since many couples like Uwera and Niyonsaba come for a quick ceremony without friends or relatives, officials hire senior citizens to serve as witnesses, with money for the program benefitting the local retirement home.
Bende Petersen, an 82-year-old who has served as a witness for scores of couples over the past year, has fallen in love with the job and expressed delight at the multilingual, multicultural nature of the proceedings. “They’re all so different,” she beamed. “And so beautiful.”
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The municipality requires couples to meet with the registrar in person several days before the ceremony. For non-locals that means staying in Tønder, and the officials eagerly promote other tourist offerings so that couples spend money in the area.
“We try to make it into a big package,” Frandsen said. “We want you to have a good time while you’re waiting.”
The doormat of Tonder’s visitor and tourist center | Saim Saeed/POLITICO
Despite the wedding traffic, the mayor is adamant that Tønder hasn’t become a marriage factory but rather provides a great deal of personal attention. The registrars, who are all women, write individual scripts for the ceremonies.
For one ceremony, Brandt quoted an old Danish song:
It’s so wonderful to walk together/For two people who wish to be together
Then the joys in life are twice as nice/And the sorrows are only half as hard to bear.
The registrars bring candles as well as small Danish flags to the ceremony and often double as wedding photographers. After the exchange of vows recently, Brandt directed the newlyweds to hold their hands in a way that would show off the rings in the picture.
“People are very grateful,” said Skipper. “It’s a happy job, and we’re glad to help them.”