Short answer. No, provided the marriage is solemnized in accordance with their customs, rites or practices. The Family Code allows marriages among Muslims, and among members of the ethnic cultural communities, to be performed validly without a marriage license — but the exemption depends entirely on that condition being met.
What the law says
Marriages among Muslims or among members of the ethnic cultural communities may be performed validly without the necessity of marriage license, provided they are solemnized in accordance with their customs, rites or practices.
Family Code, Article 33 — Marriages Among Muslims and Ethnic Cultural Communities. Read the full provision →
The word 'among' does real work
Article 33 speaks of marriages among Muslims or among members of the ethnic cultural communities. It is not a rule about one party. Where one of the two is Muslim and the other is not, the marriage does not sit within the wording of the exemption, and a couple in that position should not assume the license can be dispensed with. The same is true of a marriage between a member of an indigenous community and someone outside it. This is the first question to settle, because everything else in the article depends on the answer to it.
The exemption is conditional, not automatic
The license is excused only provided they are solemnized in accordance with their customs, rites or practices. Identity alone is not enough. A Muslim couple who marry in a civil ceremony before a judge are not performing a marriage according to Muslim rites, and the exemption in Article 33 does not reach them; they need a license like anyone else. Read the article as a recognition of an existing form of marriage rather than as a personal exemption that travels with the parties wherever and however they choose to marry.
A separate body of law governs the substance
Article 33 answers only the license question. Marriages among Muslim Filipinos are principally governed by the Code of Muslim Personal Laws, which has its own requirements for capacity, consent, the marriage contract, the dower, and the registration of the marriage, and its own courts to apply them. So a couple should not read the Family Code alone and conclude that nothing else is required of them. Indigenous customary marriages are likewise recognised in their own terms, with the recognition tied to the community's actual customs rather than to a form supplied by statute.
Register the marriage anyway
Dispensing with a license does not dispense with the record. Every institution you deal with afterwards — an employer, a bank, an insurer, a consulate, and eventually whoever settles an estate — will ask for documentary proof of the marriage, and a valid marriage that appears nowhere in the civil registry is a practical problem even though it is not a legal defect. Find out who is responsible for reporting your marriage and confirm afterwards that the record exists, rather than discovering the gap years later when someone needs proof urgently.
Related provisions
- Family Code, Article 33 — Marriages Among Muslims and Ethnic Cultural Communities
- Family Code, Article 35 — Void Marriages