In some jurisdictions a marriage certificate is the official record that two people have undertaken a marriage ceremony. In some other jurisdictions, a marriage license serves a dual purpose of granting permission for a marriage to take place and then recording the fact that it has done so.
Attestation of the Marriage Certificate is required for getting a Family visa in the Middle Eastern Countries like UAE, Saudi, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.

Procedure

• Attestation from country where the marriage was solemnized.
• Attestation from country where the family visa is being applied.

For example, if the marriage were solemnized in India, then the marriage certificate would first have to be attested in India by the concerned State’s Home Department, followed by the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi.
Now if the family visa is being applied for in UAE; the attested document from the MEA would be attested by the UAE Embassy in New Delhi and finally by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in UAE. The procedure is the same for all the countries in the Middle East.

It is mandatory to get the marriage certificate attested/apostilled, in case the couple wishes to live together in a foreign country as this attested document is proof of the marriage being legalized by the country of origin. Marriage certificate attestation is required to get a suitable family visa of UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia etc. For countries like UAE, there is a salary scale requirement of AED 4000 to be eligible for family visa whereas in Saudi Arabia there is no such requirement.