Our Achievements

• Private purchase:

  Every week, Natalia Yakymenskyy fills a bus with ready-to-marry couples and drives from Germany to Ærøskøbing, where Mayor Jørgen Otto Jørgensen awaits at the town hall, ready to forge the marital bonds. Yakymenskyy owns a wedding bureau that offers complete package solutions to foreigners, especially from Germany and Eastern Europe, who want to bypass the heavy bureaucracy in their home countries.

  In other countries, it is often a very cumbersome and slow process to get all the necessary paperwork through the system, if, for example, a German wants to marry a Russian. In Denmark, it goes faster, and with our direct cooperation with the municipality of Ærø, we offer to handle all the paperwork for our couples, Natalia Yakymenskyy says.

  

• Popular Ærø:

  Yakymenskyy's bureau is just one of five currently collaborating with the municipality of Ærø, and the island has become a magnet for foreigners contemplating marriage this year. According to the mayor's secretariat, the town hall has so far conducted 220 weddings since January, compared to 110 weddings for the same period last year. Out of the first 220 weddings this year, only eight of the couples were Danish, 154 were from Germany, 50 from Russia, while the rest were distributed among various countries, mostly from Eastern Europe.

  The significant jump in the number of weddings conducted is partly due to the fact that we have hired an additional employee in the secretariat, so we can now process more couples. But it's also because we simply get more and more inquiries, says Mayor Jørgen Otto Jørgensen, who often conducts 9-10 weddings in a single day.

  I think Ærø has become so popular because of the beautiful surroundings and the whole experience that couples get with the boat trip and the old buildings in Ærøskøbing. Those who have been here tell about it to friends and family when they come home, and in that way, Ærø has gained a good reputation, believes Jørgen Otto Jørgensen.