Get married on the record — and change your name if you want to (Maharashtra)

Required for everyone

Depends on your setup

Journey-level pitfalls

• Costly mistake —Two laws, two offices — and getting this wrong is the classic wasted month. A wedding already solemnised by religious or traditional rites registers under the Maharashtra 1998 Act, which the Act places with the Public Health Department and which your local self-government body actually runs. A marriage before a Marriage Officer (what people call a 'court marriage') is the Special Marriage Act, 1954, through the Department of Registration & Stamps, with a statutory 30-day notice. Work out which one you are doing before you go anywhere.
• Costly mistake —90 days, and the duty sits on the husband. Section 6(1)(a) is specific about that, and Section 12(1)(a) makes missing it an offence. But being late is cheap and fixable: within a year, a penalty capped at ₹100; after a year, registration is still allowed at any time on a penalty capped at ₹500. The real damage is done by couples who assume it is now impossible and simply never register.
• Costly mistake —Three witnesses, in person, signing before the Registrar — plus both of you. Section 6(1)(b) leaves no room here. Line up three people who can physically attend before you book anything.
• Costly mistake —Nobody has to change their name. This is the single most useful thing on this page. If what you actually want is your marital status or nomination updated at work, in your PF, or on an insurance policy, that runs off the marriage certificate — Section 11 of the 1998 Act bars employers, PSUs, companies and local authorities from making those record changes WITHOUT a certified copy of it. No gazette, no newspaper ad, no trip to Delhi.
• Costly mistake —If you are changing your name, the address you print in the newspaper advertisement matters more than it looks. UIDAI requires the address in the gazette to match your Aadhaar. That means the address decision happens at the newspaper stage — months before UIDAI ever sees the notification, and long before you would naturally think about it.
• Get several certified copies of the marriage certificate at the outset. Every downstream change — name, nomination, marital status, bank records, passport — wants one, and Section 11 makes it mandatory for employers to see one before they touch their records.
• Aadhaar name updates are limited, so do not burn them. UIDAI permits a couple of name updates on ordinary documents, after which a gazette notification is required and over-limit requests get rejected into an exception-handling process through a regional office. Change it once, correctly.
• Taking a maiden surname back is not just administrative. The Department of Publication requires either a divorce decree or a NOC from the husband, with his ID proof and mobile number — and if the matter is before a court, it will not process the change until the final verdict. Know that before you start rather than three documents in.
• Under the Special Marriage Act track the venue changes the price: ₹150 to solemnise at the Marriage Registrar's office, ₹1,000 anywhere else. Small money against a wedding budget, but it surprises people who assumed the venue was theirs to pick for free.