Marriage Leave

Marriage leave is paid or unpaid time off granted around an employee’s wedding, usually a one-off entitlement triggered by the event rather than drawn from a leave balance. Some countries guarantee it by statute, often generously. Others guarantee nothing.

Few leave types split the world so cleanly. An employee marrying in Madrid gets fifteen days by law. The same employee in Chicago gets whatever their employer offers. 

United States

There is no statutory marriage leave at the federal or state level. A wedding is a private matter, and time off comes from PTO, vacation, or a discretionary employer policy.

Where employers do offer it, it’s typically one to five paid days, framed as a perk rather than an entitlement and often bundled into a wider “life events” policy covering bereavement, moving house, and similar occasions.

Canada

Mostly the same picture — with one striking exception.

Quebec is the only North American jurisdiction with statutory marriage leave. Under section 81 of the Act respecting labour standards, an employee may be absent one day without reduction of wages on the day of their own wedding or civil union, and one unpaid day for the wedding or civil union of their child, father, mother, brother or sister. The employee must give the employer at least one week’s notice.

A modest entitlement, but a real one — and routinely missed by employers running a single North American policy.

Federally regulated employers, Ontario and British Columbia provide no marriage-specific leave, and neither do the other provinces. Employees there use vacation or whatever the employer allows.

Internationally

This is where the entitlement gets substantial.

Spain, Portugal and Italy each provide 15 calendar days. Spain’s comes from Article 37.3 of the Workers’ Statute, is fully paid, and generally starts on the wedding day — or the first working day after, if the ceremony falls on a non-working day. France provides four days for a marriage or civil union, Croatia up to seven for significant personal events including marriage, and Colombia introduced an entitlement in December 2024.

China is expanding its scheme right now, as part of its demographic policy. The national minimum has been three days since 1980, but provinces are extending sharply: Shandong legislated up to 18 days in January 2025, Shanxi and Gansu offer up to 30 paid days, and Sichuan consulted on 20 days plus five more for a premarital medical check. Mid-2025 reporting put at least 27 provincial-level regions in the process of extending. The driver is explicit — marriage registrations have fallen to their lowest since 1980, and leave is one lever aimed at reversing that.

Marriage leave is common across much of South and Southeast Asia too, where three days is a frequent figure.

Designing a policy

Four decisions do most of the work.

• Calendar days or working days? Statutory schemes usually mean calendar days. Spain’s fifteen días naturales include weekends, so the real value is around eleven working days. Copying “15 days” into a policy that means working days roughly doubles the cost you intended
• Who counts as married? Spain’s statute doesn’t cover unregistered partnerships, though many collective agreements do. Say explicitly whether civil and registered partnerships are included
• When must it be taken? Most statutory versions attach the leave to the wedding date. Let it float, and it becomes a second vacation allowance
• A leave type or a balance? It’s event-triggered and once-only, so it shouldn’t accrue, carry forward, or pay out on termination — it needs its own type rather than a top-up to PTO

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This entry is general information, not legal advice. Marriage leave entitlements vary by country and province and change — verify locally before applying them.