Florida Wedding Timing: the 3-Day Wait, the 60-Day License, and When the Prenup Must Be Signed

By Nadia Pazos, Family Law Attorney, Pazos Law Group · Updated September 8, 2026

The License Clock: 3 Days and 60 Days

Two periods govern the license itself, and they run in opposite directions.

The 3-day waiting period applies to Florida residents between the issuing of the license and the ceremony. It is the reason a license collected on a Thursday does not work for a Saturday wedding.

The 60-day validity period is the outer limit. A license issued and never used expires 60 days later, and the couple starts again. Collecting the license months in advance of a long engagement does not help.

The usable window, then, is the stretch between day three and day sixty.

The Fee: $86, or $61 After the Course

A Florida marriage license is $86.00. Where both parties complete a state-approved premarital preparation course, the fee is $61.00 — a reduction of $25. Both figures are the same at the Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach clerks.

These are clerk fees. They are the only figures on this page that anyone pays to a government office in connection with getting married in Florida.

Where the Prenup Fits — and Why It Has No Deadline

This is where couples usually expect a rule and find none. § 61.079 imposes no minimum interval between signing a premarital agreement and the ceremony. There is no statutory waiting period, no notarization requirement and no witness requirement in the section itself.

What the statute does impose is a boundary rather than a countdown. § 61.079(2)(a) defines a premarital agreement as one “made in contemplation of marriage and to be effective upon marriage,” and § 61.079(5) provides that it “becomes effective upon marriage of the parties.” Signed before the wedding, it takes effect at the wedding. Signed after, it is not a premarital agreement at all — it is a postnuptial agreement, which sits outside § 61.079 entirely.

So the deadline is the ceremony, and nothing else.

If One of You Is Not a Florida Resident

The 3-day waiting period is tied to Florida residency. Where it does not apply, the 60-day validity period still does — the license expires 60 days after issuance regardless of who collected it, so a destination wedding planned around an early license run into the same outer limit.

The premarital agreement is unaffected by any of this. § 61.079 contains no residency condition, and it does not require the marriage to take place in Florida; it requires only that a marriage take place. An agreement signed in Miami before a ceremony held elsewhere still becomes effective on that marriage under § 61.079(5).

Why Timing Still Matters Without a Statutory Deadline

The absence of a waiting period is not an invitation to sign at the rehearsal dinner. § 61.079(7)(a) makes an agreement unenforceable where the party resisting it proves it was not executed voluntarily, and the circumstances of signing are part of that question. A document produced with the guests already arriving is a document whose voluntariness someone can later argue about.

Working backwards from the wedding date is the practical approach: the agreement negotiated and signed with room to spare, the license collected inside the 60-day window and at least three days before the ceremony.

Florida Sets No Deadline. California Voids a Prenup Signed Inside Seven Days.

Florida is not the norm here, and the contrast is the clearest way to see what § 61.079 does and does not require. California’s premarital statute treats the calendar itself as a condition of voluntariness: an agreement executed on or after 1 January 2020 is deemed involuntary unless “the party against whom enforcement is sought had not less than seven calendar days between the time that party was first presented with the final agreement and the time the agreement was signed, regardless of whether the party is represented by legal counsel” (Cal. Fam. Code § 1615(c)(2)). California also requires independent legal counsel at signing, or an express waiver of counsel in a separate writing (Cal. Fam. Code § 1615(c)(1)).

Florida’s statute contains neither rule. § 61.079(3) asks for a writing signed by both parties and nothing else; § 61.079(5) makes it effective on the marriage. The same agreement, presented and signed on the morning of the wedding without lawyers, satisfies Florida’s formalities and fails California’s.

Two things follow for a Florida couple. First, a short interval is attacked here through § 61.079(7)(a) voluntariness, as evidence, rather than as an automatic disqualifier — which is a weaker protection for the party being asked to sign and a wider opening for the party challenging it later. Second, if you are marrying in Florida but either of you may end up litigating in a seven-day state, the California clock is worth honouring anyway; nothing in Florida law prevents you from building in the interval, and doing so removes the argument in both jurisdictions.

This describes another state’s requirement and links its governing text. Pazos Law Group is admitted in Florida and does not advise on California law.

Frequently Asked Questions

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