This page is not built from the Treasury's catalogue. That catalogue has no marriage entry and no council entries at all, which is itself the first clue. The reasoning below is read from the civil status law, the local taxation law and the tax code, and then set against what councils publish.
The celebration fee has no legal head
Start with what the law does.
The civil status law provides for the celebration and charges nothing for it. Registration of an act in a civil status register is free, and under the law in force since the end of 2024 the declaration, the registration, the original act and the first copy from the national file are all free.
Now the other side. Local taxation is carried in the tax code's own book for local authorities, and article C 3 (1) says what a council may charge:
Une collectivité territoriale ne peut percevoir un impôt, une taxe ou une redevance que s'il (elle) est créé (e) par la loi, voté (e) par l'organe délibérant et approuvé (e) par l'autorité compétente.
A levy must first be created by a law. Article C 3 (2) adds that the council then sets its rate by deliberation, within the band the law fixes.
Article C 91 then lists the communal charges, and the list is closed: slaughter fees, pound fees, rents for fitted market space, fees on building and siting permits, occupation of car parks, parking areas and quays, and the communal excise on polluting activities. A marriage celebration is not among them. The word mariage does not appear anywhere in that book of the code, and it did not appear anywhere in Law No. 2009/019 of 15 December 2009 on local taxation, which preceded it.
So there is no band for a marriage celebration, because there is no levy.
And councils charge anyway. The Yaoundé 5 council publishes "Frais de célébration de 50.000FCFA entres les nationaux ou 70.000FCFA pour un mariage avec un expatrié", citing no deliberation, no order and no law. We should say plainly that we could not open that page ourselves: the council's site serves a bot check to every request we made, and the wording above comes from a search engine's index of the official page rather than from our own read of it.
Other councils publish nothing. Douala 1er's own marriage file sheet lists the documents, the stamps and a thirty day publication period, and names no fee. Douala 5e lists conditions only. Bamenda I and Bamenda III describe the procedure and state no fee.
So the honest summary is this. No national fee exists for celebrating a civil marriage. One council of the few that publish anything publishes 50,000 FCFA and cannot point to the law that creates it. Most publish nothing at all, which is not the same as charging nothing.
The banns
One month before the celebration the civil status officer receives the declaration and posts it at the centre. The law sets no fee for that. The prosecutor may dispense with publication for serious reasons requiring speed, and no fee attaches to that either.
Douala 1er puts the publication period at thirty days from the day the file is lodged.
A copy of the certificate has three official prices
This is where the register has to be careful, because three official sources each publish a figure and none of them mentions the other two.
| Who publishes it | What for | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Tax code, articles 428 (6) and 547 | State stamp on a copy or extract, any paper format | 1,500 FCFA |
| Tax code, article C 89 | Local stamp, A4 or smaller | 500 FCFA |
| The Treasury, for the national civil status office | A copy or extract from the national file | 2,500 FCFA |
The chain is sound as far as it goes. The civil status law routes the price of a copy to the stamp legislation rather than leaving it to the council. The tax code then subjects extracts of civil status acts to the dimension stamp and prices it. The local stamp names "la copie ou l'extrait d'acte d'état civil" explicitly. On that reading a certified copy at a council counter is 2,000 FCFA, the same as a birth or death record, and for the same reasons, which are set out on the birth certificate page.
Two things stop us publishing 2,000 as the answer and leaving it there.
The national file is a different counter and charges a flat 2,500 FCFA, with no stamp breakdown and, in our read, an instrument that does not support it. Nothing published says whether that is an alternative to the council price or a layer on top of it.
And the figures in circulation include an older one that is still being served. The investment portal run with the government for Yaoundé 1 lists a certified copy of a marriage certificate as a 1,000 FCFA fiscal stamp plus a 200 FCFA communal stamp plus a 100 FCFA form. Both stamps are superseded: the state stamp moved to 1,500 FCFA on 1 January 2023, and the local stamp is 500 FCFA in the current tax code. The portal cites the 2011 edition of the tax code, which explains it.
The 200 FCFA figure is worth one more line, because it is not an error so much as a fossil. The 2009 local taxation law did set the communal stamp at 200 FCFA, and 400 above A4. The current tax code sets 500 and 1,000. The old figure is still reachable on official and semi official pages, and anyone comparing two sources will find them irreconcilable without knowing that one of them stopped in 2009.
One defect in the 2009 law deserves recording while we are here, because it shows what the published text is like. Article 104 (2) reads "Le droit de timbre communal est fixé de à 200 F". A number is missing between "de" and "à". It is missing in the law as published, not in a bad scan.
The certificate of celibacy
Every council we looked at requires one and none of them prices it. Douala 1er asks each spouse to name two witnesses who attest that they are unmarried and give their identity card numbers. Yaoundé 1 treats it as a form, at 100 FCFA, issued in the presence of a sworn civil status officer with two adult witnesses.
We found no instrument setting a price for it. We also found no Cameroonian instrument or council page using the phrase certificate of non remarriage. Councils handle remarriage with documents instead: a death certificate for a widow or widower, a marriage certificate bearing the divorce annotation or the divorce judgment with a certificate of non appeal, and for a polygamous marriage the certificate annotated accordingly.
What this page does not tell you
What your council will ask for. Whether the 50,000 FCFA celebration fee is charged anywhere else, because almost no council publishes anything. What a wedding costs, which is not a question about law.
If your council charges you to be married, the question worth asking at the counter is which deliberation sets it, and under which law. We could not find the law.
Sources
Read on 21 October 2026.
- Law No. 2024/016 of 23 December 2024 organising the civil status registration system, articles 5 and 129. Certified true copy carrying the Presidency watermark.
- Ordinance No. 81-02 of 29 June 1981, articles 17, 53, 54, 55 and 68, for the banns and the rule that the ceremony takes place in the room set aside for it at the civil status centre. The 2024 law repeals it "en ses aspects relatifs à l'état civil" and article 1 (2) leaves the rules on the state of persons to particular laws, so those provisions stand. Read from a non official reproduction.
- General Tax Code, 2026 editionour copy, book of local authorities. Articles C 3 and C 91 for what a council may levy, article C 89 for the local stamp.
- Law No. 2009/019 of 15 December 2009 on local taxation, articles 2, 3 and 104, for the superseded 200 FCFA stamp and for the absence of any marriage levy. Read from an international archive copy.
- General Tax Code, 2026 editionour copy, impots.cm. Articles 428 (6), 430, 445, 547 and C 89. Archived in full.
- Law No. 2022/020 of 27 December 2022our copy, Finance Law for 2023, article seventeenth, which moved the state stamp to 1,500 FCFA.
- The Treasury's catalogue of payable services, for the national civil status office at 2,500 FCFA.
- Commune d'arrondissement de Yaoundé 5, for the celebration fee. We could not open the page: it serves a bot check, and the wording is taken from a search index of the official page.
- Commune d'arrondissement de Douala 1er, marriage file sheet, and Douala 5e, marriage page.
- Bamenda I and Bamenda III councils, which publish procedure and no fee.
- The UNCTAD eRegulations portal for Yaoundé 1, a government partnered portal rather than a gazette, for the superseded stamp figures.
There is no online Journal Officiel for Cameroon. prc.cm is the de facto gazette.
If a figure here is wrong, tell us. The method is written out at how we verify.
Page updated 21 October 2026