Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Argentina
Two routes exist for sending a UK document abroad. An apostille is a single certificate from the FCDO Legalisation Office, trusted automatically by fellow treaty members. Embassy legalisation is longer. It adds a second stamp from the destination country's own embassy, needed only outside the apostille system. Which route applies depends entirely on where the document is going, not on the kind of paper it is.
Argentina falls into the first group. Document legalisation for Argentina is not the path that applies; the apostille is. A Reading apostille for Argentina is complete the moment the FCDO stamps it, with no embassy visit and no consular fee layered on top. Nothing further needs arranging once that certificate is attached, whatever the document is being used for.
Argentina's Hague status & what it means
Argentina joined the Hague Apostille Convention in 1988. That membership is why a single UK apostille works there. Argentine institutions read the same treaty the United Kingdom has used since 1965. Both sides trust the same certificate the same way, with no extra step in between. Neither side needs a separate form to make the arrangement work, whatever kind of paper is involved.
This keeps the process to one certificate and one office. Nothing further passes through an Argentine authority before the document can be relied on. The apostille alone carries that weight, wherever in Argentina it ends up. No separate confirmation step sits behind it once it is attached, and none needs adding later either, whatever the paperwork is eventually used for.
The Reading → Argentina route step by step
Reading Register Office, at Civic Offices, Bridge Street, Reading RG1 2LU, issues certified copies of birth, marriage and death certificates. A fresh copy for this purpose keeps the family's own original at home, untouched. There is no counter there for the apostille itself; that stage happens by post, handled entirely by the FCDO.
That copy, or any other UK document bound for Argentina, then goes to the FCDO Legalisation Office at PO Box 6255, Milton Keynes MK10 1XX. An apostille issued in Reading for use in Argentina follows this same route by post, start to finish, with no appointment to book anywhere. The finished certificate then returns the same way it arrived, ready to send on to Argentina straight away.
Cost & timing for this route
The standard postal service costs £45 per document. The current turnaround runs up to 25 working days, plus postage each way. That figure is the one to plan around for an Argentina-bound document with no fixed deadline. It applies whatever kind of document is being sent through the process, from a single certificate to several papers sent together in one batch.
Registered businesses have a faster option: the express next-working-day service, at £40 per document. It beats the standard route on both speed and price, though it stays limited to that one applicant category rather than being open to everyone. Most individual senders use the standard postal route instead, since the express service is not built for one-off personal use at all.
Destination-specific requirements
Because Argentina is a Convention member, the apostille itself is the destination-facing requirement. A court, a property registry or a university in Argentina checking a UK document looks for that one certificate and nothing more, whatever the paper is for or who first drew it up.
An apostille from United Kingdom to Argentina travels with the paperwork as a single attached certificate, whatever kind of document it accompanies. What you need for an apostille for Argentina, from the Reading side, ends there. Argentine institutions then decide, on their own terms, how the document is used once it arrives, in whichever office receives it, without any further input from the UK side.