COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Facing complex bureaucracy at home in Poland, Magdalena Kujawińska and her Colombian fiancé Heinner Valenzuela traveled to Copenhagen to become husband and wife.
“We realized that it’s not that easy to get married in Poland,” the 30-year-old Kujawińska said as the couple waited for their 10-minute ceremony at the Danish capital's 19th-century City Hall.
“You need a certificate that you are not married,” she said. "We tried to get it from Colombia, but it’s only valid for three months, and it couldn’t get to Poland from Colombia in three months. It was just impossible for us.”
The couple, who live in Krakow, had been engaged for more than three years when Kujawińska heard about Denmark's relatively relaxed marriage laws from a colleague. Working with an online wedding planner, the couple prepared the necessary documents.
“And in four days, we had the decision that the marriage could be done here,” a smiling Kujawińska said.
Couples who don't live in Denmark, both mixed- and same-sex, are increasingly getting married in the Scandinavian country — prompting some to dub Copenhagen the “Las Vegas of Europe.”
The head of the marriage office at Copenhagen City Hall, Anita Okkels Birk Thomsen, said that about 8,000 wedding ceremonies were performed there last year. Of those, some 5,400 of them were for couples in which neither partner was a Danish resident.
“That’s almost double what we saw five years ago,” she said. “They come from all over the world.”
But the city sees a downside to that: demand for ceremonies at City Hall now far exceeds the number of slots available.
Mia Nyegaard, the Copenhagen official in charge of culture and leisure, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the “significant rise” in the number of foreign couples getting married in the capital “poses challenges for Copenhagen-based couples wishing to get married.”
Local authorities plan to take action. Nyegaard said about 40% of wedding slots available at City Hall will be reserved for Copenhagen residents starting from the end of October. While booking a slot there is the most obvious way to get married in the city, arranging a ceremony with a private registrar is also an option, and that won't be affected.
Copenhagen lawmakers will look after the summer break at what else they can do to relieve overall pressure on wedding capacity in the city.
Denmark's marriage laws are liberal in several ways. In 1989, the country became the world's first to allow the registration of same-sex civil unions. The legalization of same-sex marriage followed in 2012.
For unions of all kinds, Denmark — unlike many other European countries — doesn't require a birth certificate or proof of single status to obtain a certificate that grants the right to get married in Denmark within four months. Officials might, in cases where divorce papers don't show clearly that a divorce has been finalized, ask for a civil status certificate.
Applications to Denmark's agency of family law cost 2,100 kroner ($326), and couples are issued with a certificate within five working days if they satisfy the requirements.
Non-resident couples can travel to Denmark and get married with just a valid passport and, if required, a tourist visa.
“We get that thing like, ‘Are you sure we do not need a birth certificate?’ And we go, ‘Yes,’” said Rasmus Clarck Sørensen, director of Getting Married in Denmark.
Clarck Sørensen, a Dane, began the wedding planning business with his British wife back in 2014.
“In the last 20, 30 years, people just meet more across borders," he said. “Marriage rules are often made for two people of the same country getting married.”
“They kind of piled on patches onto marriage law, and a lot of people get trapped in those patches,” he added.
His online company’s “Complete Service” package, priced at 875 euros ($1,014), includes help gathering all the necessary documents, processing the certificate application and organizing the date of the ceremony.
The business says it helped over 2,600 couples last year.
Copenhagen, easily Denmark's biggest city with the country's best transport links, is the most popular location and so far appears to be the only one struggling with demand.
Any changes to the city's rules will come too late to bother newlyweds Kujawińska and Valenzuela, who are now busy planning a celebration in Poland with family and friends.
“It means a lot for us because we’ve been waiting a lot for this,” Kujawińska said. “We’re really happy.”
People gather in front of the Copenhagen City Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Friday 18 July 2025. (AP Photo/James Brooks)
Newlyweds Magdalena Kujawińska, right, from Poland and Heinner Valenzuela from Colombia pose for photos at the Copenhagen City Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Wednesday 9 July 2025. (AP Photo/James Brooks)
Newlyweds Magdalena Kujawińska, right, from Poland and Heinner Valenzuela from Colombia pose for photos at the Copenhagen City Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Wednesday 9 July 2025. (AP Photo/James Brooks)
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Union Pacific hopes regulators will be convinced this time that its $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern that it detailed for the second time Thursday will be good for the country.
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board rejected Union Pacific's initial application because regulators wanted more details about how the deal would affect the competitive balance between the five remaining major freight railroads and the impact on customers.
Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena said the new application makes an even stronger case for the benefits of the merger that he believes would shave a day or two off the delivery time for many shipments because they would no longer have to be handed off between two railroads in the middle of the country. The Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad projects that the merger could lead to shifting 2.1 million truckloads off the highway onto trains.
Vena said CSX and BNSF are already improving their operations to ensure they can compete ,and shippers will benefit from that if the deal is approved. Plus, he pointed out that since BNSF is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway it has the financial resources to do whatever is needed because Berkshire is sitting on nearly $400 billion cash.
“The first few years after this, it’s gonna be like one of those old 15-round boxing fights. Prices are gonna be used, the service is going to be used, everything. And I think the customer’s going to be the winner in all this while we knock down, drag it out, to see who can win and grow their market share,” Vena said.
But the STB established a high bar for major railroad mergers like this one around the turn of the century after past rail mergers snarled freight and led to prolonged disruptions while two railroads worked to integrate their networks. Now Union Pacific has to demonstrate that this deal will enhance competition.
Vena said he's confident the railroads can avoid the integration problems of past mergers because they will take it slow while listening to a new board of customers about the impact. Plus this would be a combination of two successful railroads instead of many deals of the past where one thriving railroad took over another nearly bankrupt one in disrepair.
The deal includes a provision that if the STB requires more than $750 million in concessions Union Pacific can consider walking away, but it won't automatically doom the deal, the railroads disclosed Thursday as they submitted a copy of their merger agreement. Norfolk Southern would be entitled to a $2.5 billion breakup fee if the deal falls apart.
Currently, Norfolk Southern and CSX serve the eastern U.S. while Union Pacific and BNSF serve the west, and the two major Canadian rails compete where they can with their tracks crossing Canada and extending into the United States and Mexico.
A merged Union Pacific would likely control nearly 40% of the nation’s freight, but the railroad said that currently BNSF delivers that much of the nation's freight. So the railroads said the deal would shift which railroad dominates the market but wouldn't dramatically change the competitive balance.
But competitors BNSF and CPKC railroads joined a new coalition Wednesday to highlight concerns that the deal could hurt shippers and eventually consumers if it leads to higher rates for companies that have few options besides rail to get their raw materials and deliver their products. The coalition also includes trade groups for chemical and agricultural shippers and the unions that represent engineers and track maintenance workers.
“This did not begin with a customer asking for a UP-NS merger to happen,” BNSF CEO Katie Farmer said. “It’s driven by Wall Street on the promise of a big shareholder payout. It will eliminate competition, raise costs for consumers, and destabilize the supply chain that powers the American economy.”
But the biggest rail union and hundreds of shippers have backed the deal that would cut the number of major freight railroads across America down to five.
Union Pacific has promised that every union employee who has a job with either railroad at the time of the merger will have a job for life although the workforce could still shrink through attrition if the number of shipments slows down. But UP sounded an optimistic note Thursday and predicted that more than 1,200 new jobs will be created by the third year after the deal to handle the increased freight.
Previously, the railroads predicted 900 new jobs. But the new traffic data the railroads analyzed from all the major freight railroads convinced executives that more job growth is likely.
If the STB accepts this new application, regulators will likely spend more than a year analyzing every aspect of the deal.
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FILE - Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena talks in front of a locomotive simulator used to train engineers at the company's headquarters in Omaha, Neb., Dec. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)
FILE - A Norfolk Southern freight train rolls past the U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, in Clairton, Pa., Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - A Union Pacific worker walks between two locomotives that are being serviced in a railyard in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Dec. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)
