We''re getting married in Italy in less than three weeks, and we leave in 10 days. We had our appointment at the Italian Consulate today (there was a month long waiting list) to get our Atto Notorio and have our translated birth certificates authenticated. Sound easy enough, but...
You would think that I would have learned by now that anything that seems too easy probably is. And to always ask every possible question when it comes to such important things. But making sure we had all of our documents ready was supposed to be FI''s thing, but I ended up doing most of it. He set up the appointment, though.
He was told that we had to have a certified birth certificate with an apostille (for use in Italy) and a certified translation of our birth certificates. So, since we already had certified copies of our birth certificate, we scanned them in and ordered the translation online. It took a few weeks to get done. Then last week we went to the Secretary of State to get the apostille on our birth certificates. After waiting for close to a half hour, we finally get up there and are told that they can''t put an apostille on our birth certificates, because they aren''t recent enough.
Ok. Now, NOWHERE on any of the (official state) websites does it say that they need to be recent. It just says they need to be certified copies. Mine is from 1987, his is from 1996. So, since we have to get new certified birth certificates, we spend the next morning driving 45 minutes to Detroit to get the new ones. We pay the money, get the birth certificates, and I look at them and say, "Hey, these look totally different, they must have changed the way they look," not realizing until after that they were SHORT FORM birth certificates. When we got in line and filled out the forms, nobody told us we would be getting SHORT FORM birth certificates, it just said "Apply for Birth Certificates Here".
So, I''m thinking, ok, maybe it doesn''t matter so much that they''re short form. But then I realize that we already got the long form ones translated, so they don''t match. I mention it to FI and he says he doesn''t think it matters. I let it go. Then on Wednesday of this week I start thinking about it more and freaking out. Like full out panicky crying, because what if the consulate won''t accept them? We need these things to be right in order to get married.
FI emails our contact at the consulate, attaching scans of all of the documents and explaining the problem. Yesterday, he gets a response saying to make sure we bring the originals and she''ll see us tomorrow. But she didn''t really answer the question. We figure it''s probably all ok though because she would have said something if it wasn''t, right?
Welllllllll......
Turns out she didn''t understand our question. The translations won''t work, and on top of that, she says we need the apostille (which is a piece of paper attached to the birth certificates) translated as well. So I think, well, it would have been nice if SOMEBODY COULD HAVE FRICKIN TOLD US THAT!!!! Because we were told to bring translated copies of birth certificates, not of those AND the apostille.
Keep in mind now that we already spent $120 on the translations, which she now says are not going to work. We start to get really annoyed that we wasted all that money and now we''re going to have to get the new ones translated. (We later found out by looking on the consulate website that you can''t use short form for this, they have to be long form. So if we had listened to her, we would have had to start all over again.) On the way home, it occurs to me that if we can get a new certified copy of the long form (book copy, or copy of originals) then we would really only need to get the apostille translated.
In the car, FI calls around and finally gets a number for the place where we can get them done. There''s a long recording and they suggest to get them online at vitalchek.com.
We get home, look online, fill out the form, and because the reason we are choosing is International Marriage, the system selects the correct type of birth certificate that we need to be long form with apostille. We know this. But there''s a little note saying that because it has to go through the Office of the Great Seal of Michigan, it will take an extra 2-3 weeks. Not going to work. FI calls the company and asks them if there is someway we can get just the long form copy, to which we are told that no, we can''t, because you can only get long form for reasons that also require apostille. And they can''t take phone orders from people in Michigan.
At this point we are both extremely frustrated, pissed off, and totally amused at the fact that this seemingly easy task is so frickin difficult. Our only option now appears to be to drive to the state capital (Lansing), which is about an hour and 45 minutes away, and get them in person. So we do. FI calls in to work.
We get there and are told that it we''ll have to wait 1.5-2 hours for them to get them for us. We do this, and we get them. We walk to the Office of the Great Seal to get the apostille. There is no line, it takes 5 minutes. Wonderful.
So after having left the house at 8:30 this morning, we get back at 5:45 with the proper documents. And I am just exhausted.
FI has to drive back down to Detroit next week to have the consulate authenticate them for us, and they also said they can certify the translations so we don''t need that done. But this has seriously been the most screwed up day ever. I can''t believe that after all of the people we talked to, it took all of this in order to get birth certificates so that we can get married in Italy.
The good news is that FI and I stopped being pissed off and started enjoying spending the day with each other when we were driving to Lansing, and we talked about a bunch of wedding stuff so that was good. We had fun at the capital building. We figure we will one day look back on all of this and laugh about it, especially since after the year of planning the wedding it Italy, we end up having to rush to get the documents taken care of so we can actually get married.
Oh, and by the way, when FI emailed another translator about getting the apostille translated, we were told that we don''t need to do that, the consulate shouldn''t require it, because both the USA and Italy signed the "Convention de La Haye du 5 Octobre 1961", as is written on the apostille. But we''re doing it anyway, because it''s $25 and after all of this there is no way I''m going to have something be wrong again. This has just been a comedy of errors though. However, we don''t feel so bad anymore about not knowing what we were doing, because apparently the 15 other people and 6 other agencies and departments that we had to talk to don''t know what they''re doing either, and this is their job...
You would think that I would have learned by now that anything that seems too easy probably is. And to always ask every possible question when it comes to such important things. But making sure we had all of our documents ready was supposed to be FI''s thing, but I ended up doing most of it. He set up the appointment, though.
He was told that we had to have a certified birth certificate with an apostille (for use in Italy) and a certified translation of our birth certificates. So, since we already had certified copies of our birth certificate, we scanned them in and ordered the translation online. It took a few weeks to get done. Then last week we went to the Secretary of State to get the apostille on our birth certificates. After waiting for close to a half hour, we finally get up there and are told that they can''t put an apostille on our birth certificates, because they aren''t recent enough.
Ok. Now, NOWHERE on any of the (official state) websites does it say that they need to be recent. It just says they need to be certified copies. Mine is from 1987, his is from 1996. So, since we have to get new certified birth certificates, we spend the next morning driving 45 minutes to Detroit to get the new ones. We pay the money, get the birth certificates, and I look at them and say, "Hey, these look totally different, they must have changed the way they look," not realizing until after that they were SHORT FORM birth certificates. When we got in line and filled out the forms, nobody told us we would be getting SHORT FORM birth certificates, it just said "Apply for Birth Certificates Here".
So, I''m thinking, ok, maybe it doesn''t matter so much that they''re short form. But then I realize that we already got the long form ones translated, so they don''t match. I mention it to FI and he says he doesn''t think it matters. I let it go. Then on Wednesday of this week I start thinking about it more and freaking out. Like full out panicky crying, because what if the consulate won''t accept them? We need these things to be right in order to get married.
FI emails our contact at the consulate, attaching scans of all of the documents and explaining the problem. Yesterday, he gets a response saying to make sure we bring the originals and she''ll see us tomorrow. But she didn''t really answer the question. We figure it''s probably all ok though because she would have said something if it wasn''t, right?
Welllllllll......
Turns out she didn''t understand our question. The translations won''t work, and on top of that, she says we need the apostille (which is a piece of paper attached to the birth certificates) translated as well. So I think, well, it would have been nice if SOMEBODY COULD HAVE FRICKIN TOLD US THAT!!!! Because we were told to bring translated copies of birth certificates, not of those AND the apostille.
Keep in mind now that we already spent $120 on the translations, which she now says are not going to work. We start to get really annoyed that we wasted all that money and now we''re going to have to get the new ones translated. (We later found out by looking on the consulate website that you can''t use short form for this, they have to be long form. So if we had listened to her, we would have had to start all over again.) On the way home, it occurs to me that if we can get a new certified copy of the long form (book copy, or copy of originals) then we would really only need to get the apostille translated.
In the car, FI calls around and finally gets a number for the place where we can get them done. There''s a long recording and they suggest to get them online at vitalchek.com.
We get home, look online, fill out the form, and because the reason we are choosing is International Marriage, the system selects the correct type of birth certificate that we need to be long form with apostille. We know this. But there''s a little note saying that because it has to go through the Office of the Great Seal of Michigan, it will take an extra 2-3 weeks. Not going to work. FI calls the company and asks them if there is someway we can get just the long form copy, to which we are told that no, we can''t, because you can only get long form for reasons that also require apostille. And they can''t take phone orders from people in Michigan.
At this point we are both extremely frustrated, pissed off, and totally amused at the fact that this seemingly easy task is so frickin difficult. Our only option now appears to be to drive to the state capital (Lansing), which is about an hour and 45 minutes away, and get them in person. So we do. FI calls in to work.
We get there and are told that it we''ll have to wait 1.5-2 hours for them to get them for us. We do this, and we get them. We walk to the Office of the Great Seal to get the apostille. There is no line, it takes 5 minutes. Wonderful.
So after having left the house at 8:30 this morning, we get back at 5:45 with the proper documents. And I am just exhausted.
FI has to drive back down to Detroit next week to have the consulate authenticate them for us, and they also said they can certify the translations so we don''t need that done. But this has seriously been the most screwed up day ever. I can''t believe that after all of the people we talked to, it took all of this in order to get birth certificates so that we can get married in Italy.
The good news is that FI and I stopped being pissed off and started enjoying spending the day with each other when we were driving to Lansing, and we talked about a bunch of wedding stuff so that was good. We had fun at the capital building. We figure we will one day look back on all of this and laugh about it, especially since after the year of planning the wedding it Italy, we end up having to rush to get the documents taken care of so we can actually get married.
Oh, and by the way, when FI emailed another translator about getting the apostille translated, we were told that we don''t need to do that, the consulate shouldn''t require it, because both the USA and Italy signed the "Convention de La Haye du 5 Octobre 1961", as is written on the apostille. But we''re doing it anyway, because it''s $25 and after all of this there is no way I''m going to have something be wrong again. This has just been a comedy of errors though. However, we don''t feel so bad anymore about not knowing what we were doing, because apparently the 15 other people and 6 other agencies and departments that we had to talk to don''t know what they''re doing either, and this is their job...
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