Songkran and Your Paperwork: Why April Is Planned From August

Songkran is the Thai new year festival. It falls on three public holidays in April, and the government offices that register a marriage are closed on those days. A couple planning an April wedding trip cannot plan around only one of these two facts. This article treats Songkran as a scheduling fact, and sets out the arithmetic that makes April different.

If you plan to register your marriage in Thailand, our marriage registration service covers the documents, the legalization and the district office for one fixed fee.

The three days of Songkran

The Tourism Authority of Thailand states that Songkran is officially observed as a three-day national holiday, from 13 to 15 April. It also notes that celebrations run longer in some places, up to a week. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs names the three days. 13 April is Maha Songkran Day, 14 April is Nao Day, and 15 April is Thaloengsok Day, the New Year's day itself. The dates do not move with the week, so the shape of the closure around them changes from one year to the next.

The UNESCO inscription

On 6 December 2023, UNESCO inscribed "Songkran in Thailand, traditional Thai New Year festival" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Representative List is a register of living cultural practices that member states have agreed are worth safeguarding. The inscription changes no date and no office hour.

Why a closure in April delays more than one step

The legal side of a marriage in Thailand runs as a chain, and each link waits for the one before it. Your documents are translated before you fly. Legalization is the official chain of stamps that lets a Thai authority accept a document issued in another country. If you bring your documents with you, it begins after you land. If each of you legalizes a power of attorney at home and sends the originals to us ahead, it is finished before you arrive. A power of attorney is a document that authorizes another person to act for you. Where your nationality requires an appearance at your own embassy, that step comes first. The ministry takes three to five working days, with no guaranteed maximum. Only then can the district office register the marriage.

A public holiday does not take a day out of one of those steps. It takes a working day out of all of them. A closed day is not a working day, so it does not count toward the ministry's three to five. Three closed days in a row push the whole chain forward by up to three working days. How many working days are lost depends on where those dates fall in the week. Every later step then inherits the new date, along with its own uncertainty.

The district office decides the registration day

A registration date is not bought and held in advance. District offices share no central booking system. Most will not take a booking before the legalized documents are ready. The head of the district office approves a marriage that rests on foreign documents. That official is not in the office every day. A date already agreed can therefore move. The remedy is another day or another district. In a month with three closed days in the middle of it, there are fewer days to move to.

What is fixed and what is not

The three days are fixed. What sits around them is not. Thailand declares additional holidays from time to time. Those extra days come from a Cabinet resolution, taken for each year in turn. A couple looking ahead to a future April can rely on 13, 14 and 15 April. They cannot yet know whether a day before or after them will also be closed. A plan should not depend on those days staying open.

The two parts of planning an April registration

The first part is the shape of the trip: the dates, the flights, the leave from work, and how long you stay. This is settled early, because the April dates are fixed and yours are not. Our stay rule is the same in every month. With your documents and a power of attorney sent ahead, one working day is enough. If you bring your documents with you, six working days after the embassy step is the minimum, and eight to ten working days is the recommendation. In April that recommendation matters more, because closed days do not count toward it.

The second part is the documents, and it begins much later. We ask couples to plan roughly one to two months before flying in. We ask them to start no more than about three months before the planned registration date. So a couple fixing an April registration in August is not collecting papers in August. They are fixing the dates, so that the document work has a firm target later.

Planning backwards from the registration day

Pride Legal Thailand was created to become the platform for the LGBTQ community around the world looking to get married in Thailand. Our rule does not change in April. The trip is planned backwards from the registration day. The registration day is fixed by the working-day chain and by the district office, not by the festival. Songkran stays in the trip as the reason many couples chose April. We make the registration plannable from abroad and completable in a single trip. In April we plan it with the closed days counted in.

Pride Legal Thailand arranges the registration of marriages in Thailand for two people of any gender and any nationality. The fee is ฿49,000 (~1,480 USD) for both partners, fixed, with VAT and government fees included; registration outside the Bangkok region costs ฿10,000 (~300 USD) more.

To register your own marriage in Thailand, tell ELSA your nationalities and your dates on the Marriage page: she lists your documents and your timeline, and our lawyer confirms the plan. The steps in order: how two foreigners can get married in Thailand.

Sources

Tourism Authority of Thailand, TAT Newsroom, "Thailand's Songkran Festival: its origins, history and modern day observance", 26 March 2021.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, "Traditional Thai New Year festival 'Songkran in Thailand' inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity", 6 December 2023.

Tourism Authority of Thailand, TAT Newsroom, "'Songkran in Thailand' declared an UNESCO 'intangible cultural heritage'", 8 December 2023.