MikeandChris: Have rules changed recently? My son living in Poland for 3 years has been planning a wedding to his Polish fiance but authorities are now saying they do not accept a UK Certificate of no impediment to confirm he is not married.
That is correct. You son now needs to follow the same route as people whose embassies have never issued certs of no impediment, i.e. go to court for permission.
Here's a paragraph from an article I wrote a couple of years ago:
Not that there’s an absence of red tape if want to get married here. Even the US embassy website warns “Getting married in Poland requires considerable time and can be complicated”. A foreigner who wants to marry here must show a passport, a birth certificate (us foreigners, we just love to lie about being born), a “Certificate of No Impediment to the Marriage” (which show they are free to marry), and certified sworn translations of it all, including your birth certificate. Some embassies will issue the Certificate of No Impediment. The Australian embassy hand the things out immediately at a cost of 254 PLN. The British embassy put up a notice in the consulate that you intend to marry, then after 21 days give you the certificate (at a cost of 492 PLN). But other embassies, including the American embassy, cannot give you the magic paperwork; instead you have to go to the family court, which can mean waiting for up to xx weeks for an appointment. Once you get a date, you swear an oath that you are legally entitled to marry and the judge asks you (and your beloved) if you really do want to get married. Then the court checks that what you are claiming is really the situation with your country. If the court has experience dealing with your nation things move fairly quickly but if you’re from, say Cape Verde (a tiny African country virtually no Pole has heard of), and you want to get married in Bytow (a tiny Polish town virtually no foreigner has heard of) it’s going to take a while. Once everything’s been given the official OK you get a certificate saying you can indeed get married. Expect to pay between 200 and 500 PLN court fees, a few hundred for a sworn interpreter and more for a lawyer (not that one is really needed).
Apparently xx weeks is currently 12 to 16 weeks but it can take more than a year to get everything sorted.
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