Short answer. The local civil registrar of the city or municipality where either of you habitually resides. Either party's home locality will do, so you may apply where the bride lives or where the groom lives. The place you intend to hold the wedding has nothing to do with it.

What the law says

A marriage license shall be issued by the local civil registrar of the city or municipality where either contracting party habitually resides

Family Code, Article 9 — Where a Marriage License Is Obtained. Read the full provision →

Either party's home locality, not the wedding venue

Article 9 gives the rule in one line: the license is issued by the local civil registrar of the city or municipality where either contracting party habitually resides. The word doing the work is either. The Code does not require both of you to reside in the same place, and it does not send you to whichever registrar is nearer the church, the beach, the garden, or the hotel where the ceremony will be held. Couples routinely learn this late, after being told by a venue coordinator that they must apply in the town where the wedding will take place.

Habitual residence is where you actually live

The test is habitual residence, which is a question of fact about where a person really lives, not a question of what address appears on an identification card. Someone who has worked and lived in Quezon City for years is habitually resident there even if their birth certificate and voter registration still point to a province they left as a teenager. That said, the registrar has to be satisfied, so the practical task is documentary: be ready to show something that ties you to the locality you are claiming. Where a party genuinely lives abroad, this is the point that most often needs advice before anyone queues.

The article's own exception

Article 9 ends with a qualification: the rule applies except in marriages where no license is required in accordance with Chapter 2 of this Title. The Family Code recognises a short list of marriages that may be celebrated without any license at all — the best known being the case of a man and a woman who have lived together as husband and wife for at least five years without any legal impediment to marry. If a marriage falls into one of those categories, there is no license and therefore no registrar to choose. If it does not, the license requirement is not something the parties can waive between themselves.

What this means for planning

Once issued, a marriage license from your home registrar is effective for a marriage celebrated anywhere in the Philippines, which is exactly why the venue does not determine where you apply. So the sequence to plan around is: decide which of the two home localities is easier for you to reach and to prove, apply there, and treat the wedding location as a separate logistical question. If you are unsure which locality you can honestly claim as your habitual residence, settle that before you file anything, because the application you sign is a sworn one.

Cases citing this provision

These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.