BEIJING / FUZHOU - The Ministry of Civil Affairs will establish a marriage counseling agency for couples in which each spouse comes from a different side of the Taiwan Straits, ministry officials said on Monday.

More and more residents from the mainland have tied the knot with people from Taiwan in the years since cross-Straits travel was first permitted in 1987, according to a written statement by the ministry.

The increase in the frequency of cross-Straits marriages requires a dedicated government department to offer services and consultation for those couples, including marriage registration, employment, social insurance and adoption, according to the ministry.

"The institution aims to handle the requests and complaints from citizens who have married or will marry residents from Taiwan, in order to improve the quality of their marriages," an official from the ministry wrote.

The agency will be set up in Beijing, and the ministry is looking for a building and hiring staff, said Ni Chunxia, director of the marriage registration division of the Department of Social Affairs under the ministry.

Ai Ying, a Fujian native who runs a fried chicken shop in Fuzhou with her husband from Taiwan, applauded the this kind of agency.

Zeng Junqi, from Taiwan, puts a ring on the finger of his bride Xu Meizhu, from Fujian province, at a group wedding in Xiamen of Fujian in 2010. The Ministry of Civil Affairs will set up an agency to facilitate cross-Straits marriages. [Huang Shaoyi / Xinhua]