Apostille Marriage Licenses

How To Apostille Texas
Marriage Licenses

We only need three things from you to complete the expedited Texas marriage license apostille service process.

First, mail us or drop off your original Texas marriage license at our office. The Texas marriage license you submit to us cannot be a photocopy or a notarized copy and you cannot fax or email us a copy of your Texas marriage license to apostille.

The Texas Secretary of State will only accept and issue Texas apostille certificates on your original Texas marriage license that is physically presented to them not photocopies. 

When we say an “original Texas marriage license” this means you have an original Texas marriage license that was issued at the time (year) of your marriage or a certified copy of your Texas marriage license that you can only order and obtain from the Texas county of where the official Texas marriage record was first recorded at.

And yes, you can have the Texas county who issued the original marriage license mail us your Texas marriage license directly to rush apostille for you.

But only if you email us our Texas apostille order form and email us a prepaid return FedEx or UPS shipping label before we receive your Texas marriage license from the Texas county office who issued it.

Remember your Texas marriage license must have the signature of the district clerk or county clerk and their seal on it. Your Texas marriage license will be rejected by the Texas Secretary of State if the county or district clerk signature/seal is not on your certified copy marriage license or you wrongly mail us a photocopy.

Do not mail or drop off to us a Texas marriage license to apostille if it was issued before 1980. Your Texas marriage license must be issued after 1980.

If not, you will need to order a new certified copy of your Texas marriage license from the Texas county of where you were married because the Texas Secretary of State won’t be able to find that old of Texas marriage record in their state records database.

If your state certified copy or original Texas marriage license was issued between 1980-1999 you have roughly a 50/50 chance that it will be rejected by the Texas Secretary of State because they won’t be able to find that old of Texas marriage record in their state records database.

With that said we’ve successfully apostilled many Texas marriage licenses issued from the 1980’s and 1990’s that the Texas Secretary of State found so we’ll happily attempt to file your Texas marriage license that was issued during these years.

But please be aware if the Texas Secretary of State does reject your Texas marriage license we will mail you the original rejection letter that the Texas Secretary of State issues on all rejected documents.

Then you will have to order a new certified marriage license copy and pay us our full Texas apostille service fee a second time to reattempt to apostille your Texas marriage license for the second time.

Your marriage license cannot be issued from another state or foreign country and it must be issued from the State of Texas.

If your marriage license was issued from another U.S state other than Texas you can only receive an apostille certification or authentication certification on a U.S marriage license or any other type of recordable document from the state in which the document originated and was issued from.

For example, if you got married in the State of California but you now legally reside in Texas you can only obtain an apostille certificate or authentication certificate on your California marriage license from the California Secretary of State. The exact same scenario applies to all recordable legal documents and the 50 U.S states.

Apostille Texas only apostilles marriage licenses at the state government level for the State of Texas but if the country you’re sending your documents to is not a member nation of The 1961 Hague Convention you will need to go through two more legal document filing steps. We can assist you with these two steps even if we don’t obtain the state level authentication for you from a non-Texas state.

The second step is to rush file your marriage license at the United States Department of State (USDOS) office in Washington D.C but this step can only be done after you have been issued a state level authentication certificate by one of the fifty state secretary of state offices in the United States.

The third step is to rush file your marriage license with the foreign country embassy of where your documents are being submitted to in Washington D.C. This final document legalization step can only be done after you have been issued both a state and federal authentication certification on your U.S marriage license.

Second email, mail, or drop off at our office a prepaid FedEx or UPS return shipping label (we do not accept air waybills) that you can create and purchase online at FedEx.com or UPS.com from anywhere in the world without needing to create or have an existing account set up with them. You can also visit any UPS Store or FedEx Office location to purchase a prepaid shipping label as well. 

DO NOT use the United States Postal Service (USPS) because they lose things constantly
(potentially your Texas marriage license) and are completely unreliable and slow.

The reason we require a prepaid return shipping label is so we can mail your Texas marriage license apostille back to you or to wherever and whomever in the world that you want it shipped to. 

On the prepaid return FedEx or UPS shipping label that you must provide us please list the senders (from) mailing address as your name/address or any U.S address because you cannot list our company name or address as the from/sender for liability reasons. Then for the receiver’s address (to) just list the name/address of where and who you want your Texas marriage license apostille mailed back to. 

Click on the below links for easy step-by-step directions on how to create a prepaid return FedEx or UPS shipping label online in only a few minutes.

https://www.apostilletexas.org/faqs/shipping/how-and-where-do-i-create-and-purchase-a-prepaid-fedex-return-shipping-label/

https://www.apostilletexas.org/faqs/shipping/how-and-where-do-i-create-and-purchase-a-prepaid-ups-return-shipping-label/

If you want your Texas marriage license apostille shipped back to you or to someone else internationally (USA to another foreign country) please also provide us with a customs invoice (also called a commercial invoice). See the two links below to download and sign the custom prefilled out for you templates that shipping companies (FedEx, UPS) will normally require you to include whenever you ship documents internationally to certain countries.

If you or someone on your behalf will be returning to our office to pick up your apostilled Texas marriage license you of course won’t need to provide us with a prepaid return shipping label.

https://www.apostilletexas.org/faqs/shipping/where-do-i-download-a-fedex-shipping-invoice-template-to-use-for-international-shipping/ 

https://www.apostilletexas.org/faqs/shipping/where-do-i-download-a-ups-shipping-invoice-template-to-use-for-international-shipping/ 

For the fastest possible return time, we can hand deliver your Texas marriage license apostille right to your home, office, business or hotel anywhere in Texas the very same day that we apostilled it for an additional courier fee.

The courier cost will depend on what city and zip code in Texas you need us to travel to. This is for situations where you don’t have the time to travel back to our office to pick up your Texas marriage license apostille or you don’t want it mailed anywhere for some reason.

Third, you will need to download, sign, and email, mail, or drop off at our office our rush Texas apostille service order form that can be instantly downloaded by clicking on the blue Texas apostille services order button below.

We cannot accept or process your Texas marriage license apostille request by mail or drop off until we receive a properly completed Texas apostille service order form from you.

If you will be dropping your Texas marriage license off at our office in person you must bring this completed Texas apostille services order form in with you along with any other documents that you want us to rush apostille for you.

When you arrive at our office walk up to our front lobby receptionist desk area and tell them that you have a Texas marriage license to dropoff for Apostille Texas. Detailed directions and pictures of our office and office building are on our contact us page as well for you to view.

Please also understand your Texas marriage license will not and cannot be apostilled onsite at our office so this isn’t walk-in service.

The only legal and government entity in Texas that can issue Texas apostille certificates is the Texas Secretary of State office which is where we will rush file your Texas marriage license at on your behalf.

We must receive your Texas marriage license by mail or dropped off at our office by noon CST Monday-Friday (excluding all federal and state holidays) to be able to provide you with same day Texas apostille services. If we receive your Texas marriage license after that cutoff time don’t worry we’ll simply attempt to file it on the next business day. 

Lastly, we do not have these Texas apostille services order forms available at our front desk receptionist area.

So if you choose to drop off your Texas marriage license at our office please make sure to print out and bring this Texas apostille service order form in with you or alternatively you can email us the completed Texas apostille services order form ahead of time.