Skip to content
Married in Colorado

Country Notes

Slovenia

Slovenian law favors recognizing a marriage on Colorado's own terms. Unlike some neighbors, it's had full marriage equality for same-sex couples since 2023.

The general rule favors you

Slovenia’s private international law statute assigns the form of a marriage, how it’s conducted, to the law of the place of celebration, and separately says a marriage’s validity is judged under whichever law governed that form. Since Colorado law permits self-solemnization, this points toward recognition on Colorado’s own terms.

A reasoned reading of the statute, not confirmed government guidance on self-solemnization by name; we found no Slovenian source addressing that exact scenario. Treat this as statutorily favorable, not as a confirmed outcome in practice.

Get the certificate of single status before you go

Slovenia has a specific, well-documented document for this: a “potrdilo o samskem stanu” (certificate of single/free marital status, sometimes called a “samski list”), issued by the registrar of any Administrative Unit, or available through the Slovenian Embassy for a small consular fee if you’re applying from abroad. This confirms you’re free to marry, useful for the Slovenian-side paper trail even though Colorado’s own marriage license process doesn’t require it from foreign nationals.

Registration

Slovenian citizens marrying abroad register the marriage in the national civil registry, typically through a Slovenian embassy, submitting the apostilled and translated foreign marriage certificate. We couldn’t confirm from available sources exactly what happens if this step is skipped, so treat it as the right thing to do rather than something with a documented penalty for not doing it.

What this means practically

  • If either of you is Slovenian, get the certificate of single status before you travel.
  • Register the marriage with a Slovenian embassy afterward.
  • Keep your apostilled Colorado certificate ready either way.

This is worth stating clearly, since it’s easy to lump nearby countries together and get it wrong: Slovenia’s Constitutional Court struck down the opposite-sex-only definition of marriage in 2022, and Slovenia has had full marriage equality, including joint adoption, since January 2023. Unlike Croatia’s life-partnership conversion or Romania and Bulgaria’s lack of any recognition, a same-sex couple self-solemnizing in Colorado faces the same general recognition question here as an opposite-sex couple, not a downgraded or separate one. See does it matter if we’re a same-sex couple for why that’s not the case everywhere in this library.

See does it matter what country we’re from for the broader picture.