Report of Marriage (ROM)

We had to wait till the revised Koseki Tohon (Family Register) was issued before we had to report our marriage to the Philippine embassy in Japan. NB: Revised Koseki Tohon will already reflect my name as hubby’s wifey on their family tree. As such, hubby was only able to apply for our ROM last Oct 25 – more than a month after our civil marriage. In any case, kudos hubby for successfully getting through the maze in Philippine Embassy in Tokyo! =)

Now, as usual, ROM is not just “reporting”. It has a lot of documentation required.

  1. Duly accomplished Report of Marriage (ROM) application form available at the Consular Information Counter, or downloadable from the official Embassy website at http://tokyo.philembassy.net. It would be helpful if you try to secure ahead of time a blank copy of the form. Forms are forms and there might be additional requirements that are indicated on the form which wasn’t stated on the website nor was informed by the government official when you had your inquiry. This was our lessons learned for the civil marriage application form in Minami Ward Office.
  2. One original and 2 copies of Certified true copy of the Marriage Notification Report to City Hall (Konintodoke no Kisai Jiko Shomeisho). This one is the equivalent of the Marriage certificate here in Philippines.
  3. One Original and 2 copies of the following, whichever is applicable, to be obtained from the City Hall:
    • If spouse is Japanese, latest Family Registry (Koseki Tohon) reflecting the couple’s place and date of marriage. (Koseki Shohon, Certificate of Acceptance of Marriage is NOT acceptable)
    • If spouse is a Foreign National other than Japanese:
      1. Certificate of Acceptance of Marriage (Juri Shomeisho) showing the couple’s place and date of marriage.
      2. Two (2) Passport copies of foreign national
  4. Certificate of No Objection (CNO)  (2 copies)
  5. Birth Certificate of the Filipino spouse in security paper issued by the NSO (Original & 2 copies). The Philippine Embassy required that the birth certificate I give them has to be further authenticated by the DFA. I got several copies hence the one we submitted was not only NSO authenticated but DFA authenticated as well.

REMINDERS:

  • The Koseki Tohon can usually be obtained after one week (or more) from the City Hall which accepted the marriage of the couple. In our case, it was “or more”.
  • The original of the CNO goes to the City Hall while the photocopy is retained by the Filipino applicant for future reference.  An applicant is reminded to secure and retain a photocopy of all important documents submitted to the City Hall, such as CNO and authenticated Birth Certficate, etc., in case they are required for submission to the Embassy.

FEES:

Basic Fee : US$25
Translation Fee (of Koseki Tohon) : US$25

Above full information was taken from The Philippine Embassy Consular Section ROM webpage.

Oh by the way, it would take 2 weeks before we can obtain the certificate of ROM which we will use in our other applications. And yes, we still have more documentations and applications our way. Both in Japan, and here, for the Church wedding. Goodluck to us hubby! =)

Civilly married!

Finally, after some ups and starts, Atsushi and I are civilly married already!

To get officially married, we had to submit the following to Minami Ward (the Ward office closest to where Atsushi is staying now):

  1. Atsushi’s Koseki Tohon
  2. my CNO
  3. my Birth Certificate
  4. photocopies of the pages of my passport
  5. application form which includes hanko and details of our two witnesses who should be 20 years old and above. We had Atsushi’s batchmates as our witnesses.

I look forward to our Church wedding; a wedding that would be very special.

We also had a couple of achievements yesterday:

1. got our CNO from the Philippine embassy which of course  is one of the requirements for our civil marriage.

2. we finally selected, ordered and paid for our wedding rings!!! Oh how lovely were they! Too bad I wasn’t able to take a picture of them as I ran out of cp batteries already. Both Atsushi’s and my ring are platinum with mine encrusted with five diamonds. Can’t wait till we pick them up come January 18, 2011!!

Count thy blessings yes. And I thank you Lord. And oh yes, I hope to post soon my great experience with Atsushi’s family last weekend.

CNO

Applied for our Certificate of No Objection (CNO) at the Philippine Embassy today (Sept 14), yey! It was quite chaotic in the area, what with all the crowd at such a small space and with all the screaming and crying children but we got all our requirements done right:

  1. Atsushi’s Koseki Tohon
  2. Atsushi’s Juminhyo
  3. Marjorie’ s Birth Certificate (DFA authenticated)
  4. Marjorie’s CENOMAR which indicated “Marriage” as the purpose (DFA authenticated)
  5. photocopies of the above (thankfully there’s a photocopying machine in the area)
  6. 2 copies each of passport sized picture.

Our CNO will be released on Sept 21 (5 days after), afterwich we can then go to the ward office to register our marriage civilly.

CNO Basic Fee : US$25
Affidavit of Civil Status : US$25
English Translation(of Koseki Tohon or Juri Shomeisho x 2): US$50
TOTAL  : US$100

After the Philippine Embassy chaos, we relaxed a bit in Starbucks Roponggi and at 5pm, headed to Funabashi to meet with Maha and incidentally, Kawauchi-san (who just arrived yesterday with his family from the United States after staying there for almost three years). We had such a great dinner with them! =)

at Starbucks near Roponggi station