Planning a Virgin Islands wedding

The USVI or the BVI: which license fits your dates

The border decides the paperwork. The US Virgin Islands license comes from the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands and takes eight days from filing, because the court posts every application for public examination before it issues; the British Virgin Islands license comes from the Registrar-General in Road Town and can be in your hands within a few days of landing, for a higher stamp fee. A couple with a week on St. John files before the flight; a couple on a charter in the BVI applies the morning after they land.

Everything in the table is as each government published it on October 22, 2026, and the sections below take each side in turn. One more line divides them: the US Virgin Islands has married same-sex couples since 2015, and the BVI does not, as of 2026; its Governor's statement of June 22, 2026 welcomes a move toward civil partnerships for same-sex couples instead.

Getting a USVI marriage license, step by step

File before you fly. The Superior Court of the Virgin Islands takes the application online through its e-filing portal, and the eight-day posting runs from filing, so a couple who applies from home lands with the wait behind them. These are the court's steps as published on October 22, 2026.

No blood test and no physical, and nothing about residence: the court asks off-island couples for a mailing address and mails the packet, or you download it. The court's older information page still says applicants must appear before the clerk; its newer marriage page gives the signed oath as an alternative and sets the dress for anyone who does come in, business casual, no slippers or shorts, so the trip to the courthouse is for the pick-up, not the filing, unless you file there.

The tradeoff is the calendar. Posting is eight days, the court is closed on territorial holidays, Carnival Saturday and Good Friday among them, and a weekend pick-up needs a prior arrangement and the surcharge. Put the ceremony date on the cover sheet and file two weeks or more ahead. The court states no expiry for the license, so if your dates move, ask the Family Division rather than assume.

For a judge, the court charges $400 and holds ceremonies in its Magistrate Division: on St. Thomas, Monday to Friday at 8:30 am; on St. Croix, Wednesdays at 9 am.

The BVI marriage license: special or ordinary

A visitor takes the special license. The BVI Tourist Board's rules, read October 22, 2026, give two kinds: the special license for a couple present at the application and in the territory at least one day, paid with a US$220 postage stamp, and the ordinary license for anyone resident 15 days or more, US$120. Processing is one working day by the Tourist Board's page; allow up to three, since by our read a weekend or a public holiday adds a day, and the government's own application page could not be opened when we checked. The license stays valid for three months from the day it is signed, so a ceremony later in the trip, or on a later trip, is covered.

Bring more paper than the US side asks for: passports that show the day you arrived, originals or certified copies of a divorce decree or a death certificate where there was a previous marriage, and two witnesses to sign the application, who may be different from the two who must stand with you at the ceremony. You can start the application online and finish it at the Registrar-General's Office in Road Town, open 8:30 am to 4:30 pm on weekdays.

The Registrar-General will marry you at the office on a weekday between 9 am and 4 pm, or come to you, Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 6:30 pm, for US$220 plus the fare if the ceremony is on another island; arriving late costs US$75. The in-office fee is the one figure the Tourist Board's page gives twice, US$120 in its table and US$340 in its text, so confirm it with the office before you count on either. A church wedding needs banns read on three consecutive Saturdays or Sundays, which is a longer trip than most visitors plan.

The BVI is a separate country for this purpose. A passport is the entry document, the US passport card included for the ferry; our BVI getting-there guide has the crossings and the passport and entry page what each island asks for.

Which island suits which wedding

St. John for a small ceremony on a park beach, St. Thomas for the guest list, the BVI for a boat. That is the short version; the island pages hold the venues.

St. John is almost 58 percent national park, and the beaches people picture, Trunk Bay and Hawksnest among them, are park beaches: the ceremony needs the park's permit, the guests park where everyone parks, and the beach stays open to everyone else. The island's planners run the permit for you. The St. John wedding venues page has the resort lawns, the planners' beach packages and Lovango's private cay, with the site fees each publishes.

St. Thomas has the rooms. A guest list of fifty or a hundred needs flights into Cyril E. King Airport, beds and a reception, and St. Thomas is the island with all three. Magens Bay is the public beach most couples ask about, and it is a daytime venue: the gates close at 5:30 pm, before the earliest sunset of the year. The St. Thomas wedding venues page ranks them by head count.

The BVI is the sailing side, and its wedding is the one on deck: the Registrar-General travels, a charter captain anchors off a beach, and the license is in hand within days. The tradeoff is the border: a ferry or a flight each way, and no wedding directory of ours yet. Our which island page weighs the three for a first trip, which is also the question a wedding party asks.

Where a beach wedding needs a permit or a fee

A beach here is free to walk onto and not free to marry on. The beaches with a wedding rule are the ones someone manages, and the rule is a permit or a fee.

Inside Virgin Islands National Park on St. John, the National Park Service treats a wedding as a special park use. Its permits page, updated June 30, 2026, puts the application fee at $50, non-refundable, with a reasonable processing time of ten business days that can run longer for a large event, and says other fees may be charged. The form is a fillable PDF on the page, and the park asks you to read its Superintendent's Compendium first. Hawksnest and Trunk Bay are the beaches the island's planners sell; Trunk Bay also charges its $5 entry, 16 and over.

On St. Thomas, Magens Bay and Smith Bay Park at Lindquist Beach are run by the Magens Bay Authority, which charges $250 for a wedding or a vow renewal as of October 2026, on top of the $7 gate fee for each non-resident guest. The park opens at 7 am and closes at 5:30 pm every day. Tents and setups carry their own fees, listed on the Authority's site.

In the BVI, beaches are public and no government page we found sets a wedding permit for them; by our read, the Registrar-General's outside-the-office fee is the only official cost of a ceremony on the sand, and the resort or the charter company whose beach or boat you use sets the rest. The Baths on Virgin Gorda is the Virgin Gorda beach most couples picture, by our read, and it is a National Parks Trust site with a $3 day pass and gates that close at 4:30 pm, so ask the Trust before you plan a ceremony among the boulders.

What a Virgin Islands wedding costs, from what is published

The government fees are small and fixed; the venue sets the rest, and most venues quote only on request. These are the figures published on October 22, 2026, with the venue floors from each island's directory.

So an elopement on the US side with your own officiant is $200 of paperwork and whatever the beach charges; the same two people at the courthouse on St. Thomas are $600. A reception is a different sum, and the published site fees come with conditions; the two directories carry each venue's conditions and the date they were read.

Eloping in the Virgin Islands with nobody but you

On the US side, the shortest honest plan is this: file online two weeks before the trip with the wedding date on the cover sheet, land, collect the license on a weekday, and marry at 8:30 am on St. Thomas in front of a judge, or on a beach in front of an officiant you hire. A Virgin Islands elopement on St. John is usually the second: the planners on the St. John page file the park permit and bring the officiant, from $695 as published, and the couple's only job is the court's packet.

On the BVI side, the special license was written for exactly this. Arrive, apply the next morning with two witnesses to sign, collect the license a working day or so later, and the Registrar-General will meet you on a beach or a dock any day but Sunday for US$220. Two witnesses must be at the ceremony too; if you have brought nobody, ask the crew or the resort when you book whether two of them will stand as witnesses.

For the week around the ceremony, the St. John honeymoon guide and the St. Thomas honeymoon guide say where a couple should sleep and how far dinner is.

The dry months, the storm window and when to marry

February and March, if the date is yours to choose. They are the driest months at the Cyril E. King Airport station on NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals, 1.9 inches of rain each, and the sea is at its coolest, which here means 80 degrees. They are also the weeks villa rates peak on the rate cards here.

The months to weigh are mid-August to late October, the window the territory's emergency agency names as the most active of hurricane season. A storm gives days of notice, and in most seasons no hurricane comes within 100 km of the islands, but a wedding is the one trip whose date cannot move, so a September or October booking wants travel insurance bought before a storm has a name. Our hurricane season page has the storm record by month and what a named storm does to a deposit; the US Virgin Islands weather page and the BVI weather page have every month's rain and sea temperature.

May and June are the quiet answer: low-season rates, the sea at 83 degrees in May and 84 by June, and a clean storm record on the islands' own count. A June wedding lands in a good month.

Your rental villa as the wedding venue

A villa is the venue most couples with a guest list want and the one no directory can promise. Whether a house takes a ceremony or a dinner for thirty is the owner's call, and the villa page's Things to know says it where the owner has set it: no events or parties, events with the owner's approval, or events welcome; where the line is missing, ask. Read that line before you fall for the terrace.

Then write to the owner with the head count, the date and what the day looks like: a ceremony on the lawn and dinner for twelve is a different ask from a reception with a band. The owner replies to you directly, and the house rules, the parking and the neighbors are theirs to speak for. Where a house allows it, the villa wedding is the one with no site fee and no 5:30 pm gate, and the villa pages on St. John, St. Thomas and in the BVI are where to look.

Questions about the Virgin Islands