Spain's Atlantic islands off the coast of Africa, where an eternal-spring climate makes a winter wedding as easy as a summer one. The archipelago runs from the volcanic drama of Tenerife and Lanzarote to the lush laurel forests of the greener western isles, with black-sand and golden beaches throughout. A Canary Islands wedding is the year-round option, striking and warm, with the trade-off that every island is its own place and its own flight.
Spain has had full marriage equality since 2005, so a wedding in the Canary Islands is legally binding for every couple, with no asterisk. The practical catch is residency. A Spanish civil marriage usually requires one partner to have lived in Spain for about two years, so most foreign couples, whatever their orientation, marry legally at home and hold their ceremony here. A Catholic wedding is the exception and skips the residency rule.
It is the year-round outlier of Spanish weddings, the one place in the country where a December ceremony is as safe a bet as a June one. The islands are volcanic and strikingly varied: Tenerife has the snow-capped cone of Teide and both black and golden beaches, Lanzarote is otherworldly lava and design, and the smaller western islands are green and forested. The climate and the scenery are the draw. The honest trade-off is remoteness, since the archipelago sits off the African coast, so every island means a flight and reaching the smaller ones can mean two.
Three corners of the region pull in slightly different directions. None is more correct than another; they are simply moods. The three below are the ones worth knowing first.
We are mapping the Canary Islands sub-area by sub-area, from Tenerife to Gran Canaria to Lanzarote. Be first as each one opens, with the honest legal notes that come with it.
The quiz reads your taste and points you to the regions, and the kind of ceremony, that fit you.