Wedding anyone else annoyed by legal papers necessary for getting married?

[noelwr]

I''ve had fun reading all the topics around planning the wedding ceremony, but honestly the biggest hassle we''re having for the wedding is getting all the papers together.

we live in Holland, we both have Dutch passports, but neither of us were born in Holland.

he had to ask his father to get his birth certificate from South Africa. luckily this is in English and they have some type of treaty with Holland that a government stamp is fine for legalisation.

I had to contact the Dutch embassy in Brazil to go ask the notary of the province in which I was born to give me a copy of my birth certificate. this took about 2 months and quite some money. then the embassy had to legalise it and sent it to me. if the embassy didn''t have such a procedure in place I would have had to fly to Brazil and organize this all myself. THEN I had to go find a special legalised translator to translate it from Portuguese to Dutch. this cost me more money. (by the way, I have two dots over the e in my name and the Brazilian notary said they can''t do that because they don''t have such a symbol on their keyboard

... so now I have a birth certificate with my name spelled incorrectly.)

as we are ahead of schedule (we''re getting married 1 Sep 2009) and we can only apply for marriage a year before, we are now having our birth certificates registered in Holland so we never have to go through this silly process again and can just pick up our certificates here. however, this registering procedure takes about 7 months (and I won''t go into all the papers that we needed for THAT).

AND we need a letter from the South African government saying that he was never married while living in South Africa. this will take about 5 months.

so I''m hoping that his "never been married" letter doesn''t come in too early and that they don''t take longer than 7 months to register our birth certificates as all the papers can''t be older than 6 months when we apply for marriage.

what a nightmare. anyone else going through this type of legal crap?

 

[doodle]

WOW. this really makes me feel guilty for complaining about the line to get a passport! hope everything works out for the best!

 

[WishfulThinking]

That sounds horrible! I can''t believe they''re making you jump through all of those hoops, and sorry that it''s so expensive. What a drag.

We''re also having huge legal problems/frustrations/uncertainties. We can''t even currently GET legally married as a same sex couple, and an election will be making that determination for us... before we get married but after we''ve started full-blown planning. And there is a logistical nightmare about what a marriage recognized in 3 states in the US but not in any others and is expressly banned in the vast majority of states means in terms of legal rights-- health insurance coverage, student loans, whether it will STAY legal if it becomes banned again... all of that is making me sick, and there are no answers, and won''t be any answers until years from now when people have sued, either successfully or unsuccessfully for recognition of contracts/rights.

Sigh.

 

[gtn]

Noelwr, if i had to jump the hoops you did, I would surely be annoyed. I did have to get my birth certificate amended to fix some typos. It took me a year to get it fixed and certified. I remember how annoying that was. I feel for you. I am just thankful that you are dealing with this now and not discovering this headache right before your wedding.

 

[choro72]

I haven''t started the paperwork yet, but your post is giving me an idea of the headaches we will be facing. We''re getting married June 2009, but we want a second ceremony in Japan in Aug 2009. We need to apply for my Permanent Residency before that otherwise I won''t be able to reenter this country after the Japan celebration.
We need the marriage certificate, birth certificate, translation for it, and other stuff. The biggest worry for us is lawyer fees. We don''t know if we are going with lawyers, but I heard that it may be better.

 

[gtn]

Date: 7/8/2008 5:45:52 PM
Author: choro72
I haven''t started the paperwork yet, but your post is giving me an idea of the headaches we will be facing. We''re getting married June 2009, but we want a second ceremony in Japan in Aug 2009. We need to apply for my Permanent Residency before that otherwise I won''t be able to reenter this country after the Japan celebration.

We need the marriage certificate, birth certificate, translation for it, and other stuff. The biggest worry for us is lawyer fees. We don''t know if we are going with lawyers, but I heard that it may be better.

It might be helpful to go to the japanese embassy. they might be able to point you in the right direction.

 

[Independent Gal]

Oh honey, I feel your pain! We were dealing with four countries and four systems and the paperwork took, like, TWO MONTHS!!! For a while there, we were single handedly keeping FedEx''s stock afloat with all the documents were sending back and forth across the world. It was a complete nightmare. Plus, we couldn''t actually set the date until all the paperwork was done, because we needed it all in order to book the city hall.

So I feel ya, sister.

 

[noelwr]

ok, I don''t feel so alone in this anymore. I guess in the end the laws are there to protect us, but it just all seems silly when you''re getting married in the country of which you hold the passport. in the end this is all simpler than getting legally married in South Africa (we''re just having the ceremony there and having the brother in law "marry" us). if we had gotten legally married there, then we''d expect the SA government to lose the papers and that it would take even more requesting of papers and waiting of many more months to register it in Holland.

one thing I have learned about this whole experience is that FI is committed to getting married. I can think of a ton of men who if stuck in this situation with going from one office to the next getting all these papers would have given up. he went to the SA embassy to renew both his passport and get the "never been married" letter. they were so incompetent that he said, "I don''t care about the passport. Just make sure you get me the damn letter!"

WishfulThinking: you can always move to Holland where same sex marriage is legal (though you have been prewarned regarding all the papers you need). though it would probably be very far away from friends and family.

 

[swimmer]

Noelwr,
Good luck with the bureaucracy and red tape. Yes, it can be endless. We got married in the US, where we live now, but we are both Israeli and wanted originally to get married there, but since DH can''t prove that he is Jewish, that wasn''t possible. He is Jewish, so am I, we both served in the IDF and each lived there more than a decade. Our Rabbi here, who does same sex and interfaith marriages, suggested that DH show the rabbinical tribunal the physical evidence of him being a Jew... But that would have gotten him arrested for indecent exposure perhaps, and led to more red tape.

Good luck with the nonsense!

 

[WishfulThinking]

Date: 7/9/2008 6:21:23 AM
Author: noelwr
WishfulThinking: you can always move to Holland where same sex marriage is legal (though you have been prewarned regarding all the papers you need). though it would probably be very far away from friends and family.

I would LOVE to!

I''ve always dreamed of moving out of this country that seems to be pretty far removed from my political, social, and personal beliefs...

I''m not so great with foreign languages, though. Bordering on incompetent. That limits a lot of possibilities, unfortunately.