Weddings, incentives and New Year
A wedding on board in Phuket
Can I get married on a charter yacht in Thailand?
The short answer
Can I get married on a charter yacht in Thailand?
A ceremony aboard a charter yacht in Phuket is easy to arrange and most operators have done it many times. What a captain in Thai waters cannot do is solemnise a legally binding marriage: legal marriage in Thailand is registered at a district office ashore, with an affirmation of freedom to marry from your embassy first. The usual arrangement is to register the marriage ashore on one day and hold the ceremony people actually remember on the yacht on another, and the two are planned as separate events.
The two events
- 01The legal registration. Affirmation of freedom to marry from your embassy in Bangkok, translated and legalised, then registration at a district office. It takes several working days and it happens on land.
- 02The ceremony. Aboard, at anchor, usually in the late afternoon. No legal standing and it is the one in the photographs.
What the yacht needs to be
- Big enough for the guest list, remembering the twelve-guest cap on a licensed charter. A wedding party of thirty is a shore event with a yacht in it, or several yachts.
- Somewhere flat and sheltered. Phang Nga Bay is the obvious answer: no swell, and a limestone wall behind the ceremony.
- Crewed. This is not a bareboat occasion.
The twelve-guest limit is the thing that reshapes most yacht wedding plans. It is a legal cap on a licensed charter yacht rather than a capacity figure, so a larger yacht does not solve it.
Timing
Late afternoon at anchor, with the ceremony ending as the light goes. In the northeast season the sun sets between about 18:15 and 18:45, and the twenty minutes before it are the reason people do this on a yacht rather than in a hotel.
Last checked 6 September 2026. Rates, fees and regulations in this market change every season, so figures on this page are correct as at that date and not afterwards. How the figures are gathered.