Date and place of birth on the NOIM
Item 8 of the Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) asks for each person’s birthplace. Item 9 asks for their date of birth. You’ll hear us celebrants talk about “date and place of birth” all the time because it’s one of the types of evidence we need to sight. But what are the nuances for recording date and place of birth on the marriage documents?
Remember this information is all collected to support your identity and to differentiate you from other people with the same name as you. Date and place of birth are considered as key identity attributes and therefore mandatory on all kinds of documents. Marriage documents are no different.
Birthplace
The instructions on page 2 of the NOIM tell us:
If you were born in Australia, your birthplace is the city or town and state or territory. If you were born outside Australia, your birthplace is the city or town, state or province (if applicable) and country.
Honestly that’s a lot of words that many people (including some celebrants) completely miss when they’re completing the NOIM. And to complicate matters, we must refer to the documentation the person provides us when recording the birthplace in item 8. So here’s a rundown.
Born in Australia
If you were born in Australia, you need to record two pieces of information:
- city or town
- state or territory.
For example, your birthplace might be Mount Waverley (town), Victoria (state). Or it might be Brisbane (city), Queensland (state).
Whether you record the town or state depends on what kind of documentation you provide to us as evidence of your date and place of birth.
- If you provide a birth certificate, that’s always going to have the town/suburb listed.
- If you provide a passport, well, you get to choose when your passport is issued whether it lists the town/suburb or city you were born in. We need to make sure we’ve seen evidence of whatever is recorded in item 8. So if your passport says your were born in Melbourne, we can’t accept Carlton being recorded as your birthplace.
Clear as mud? I thought so…
Born overseas
If you were born overseas, you need to record three pieces of information:
- city or town
- state or province (if applicable)
- country.
The reason for the addition of state or province is that in some countries there are multiple cities with the same name. Take the USA for example: there are 45 cities named Richmond in the US. 45!!!! So if you record that you were born in Richmond, USA, that’s not very helpful. The Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages want to know which Richmond you were born in.
Date of birth
There’s no extra instructions for this item. It doesn’t matter if you write it in numbers or words. There are no rules. It’s chaos!
Only joking. Write your date of birth however you like, just make sure it’s in the Australian format of day/month/year. If you want to write you were born on 11/12/1979, fine. If you want to write 11 December 1979, also fine.
Again, your date of birth needs to match up with the documentation you provide us for this purpose. This item really shouldn’t be controversial or difficult!
That’s it! The date and place of birth items on the NOIM should be pretty simple. They’ll feed through to the other marriage documents so your celebrant is going to check to make sure they’re accurate as per the evidence you provide. Easy!
More information
Click here for a full overview of the legal requirements of marriage in Australia.
Read all the posts in my series about marriage legalities here.
Find all the posts in my series about Australian wedding ceremonies here.