6 Procedural Requirements of Marriage; Registered Marriage — Court Marriage

1. The two routes of the Code 2074: - Social marriage + registration: the ceremony performed (religious or customary at the families' choice), then registration at the local level (the ward office) — the certificate as proof (the registration's evidentiary-and-administrative function: citizenship, passports, property, succession); - Direct registration — "court marriage": the parties apply to the prescribed authority for registration of marriage without a social ceremony — the public-notice period for objections, then registration — the secular-and- intercaste couples' route (historically through the court under the old Ain's Chapter on Marriage, hence "court marriage"; now the local-level registration machinery — the name surviving the forum's migration); 2. Registration's legal character: constitutive or evidentiary? — the Code's design: the ceremony creates the marriage; the certificate proves it; the unregistered marriage not void (the recognition of social reality) but the registration the gateway to documentation-and- remedies (the practice gap: the unregistered wife's evidentiary struggles in maintenance and property cases — the critical paragraph); 3. The foreign marriage: Nepali citizens marrying abroad — registration at the Nepali mission or later in Nepal (the consular route); foreigners marrying in Nepal — the documentation-and- no-objection practice.