Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Saga of the Missing Marriage License...

Back two weeks ago, when we got married, we signed our marriage license. That's usually how those things work. In any case, here's what I remember of that encounter: Ben took the actual license to make things all official...and I remember handing someone the ceremonial one that we keep, along with the application for name change, and asking them to make sure it got with our stuff.

So the day rolls around, after the honeymoon, that I actually have time to go to the Social Security office to get my name changed. Of course, I couldn't find the papers or the ceremonial license anywhere. I looked through all the boxes, gifts, etc. I made the mistake of asking Ben if he knew of it's whereabouts, only to be given deserved crap about losing it after he apparently asked me if I wanted it or if he should hold onto it. I asked Terri and told Adam to ask Erik (the maid of honor and best man respectively) if they knew where it was...'cause they were the only other two people that I remembered being in the room when we signed it. The only deduction that Adam and I came to after neither of them having helpful information was that it HAD to be at church, still.

Now, let me interject that it was only the commemorative certificate in that folder, and that could be easily duplicated if necessary...it just wouldn't be the same...

Thus, I emailed five or six of the church staff begging them to look in the room we signed the license in to see if they could come up with it, but in the meantime, decided that I'd just go to church myself and look for it. While at church, I asked several people, checked the storage room, and asked Brian (the Adult Minister, and the person who heads up after wedding clean up) to no avail. I walked down to the room it was in, and found nothing, but the walk back down the hallway sparked my memory that I DID, in fact, as someone to take care of it...(and to give credit where it's due, Adam suggested calling Jenna (my good friend who acted as Wedding Coordinator), but I swore up and down she wasn't in the room)...

...which she wasn't when I handed her the folder and asked her if she could make sure the guest books and the license got put with my stuff at the reception.

So, I called Jenna...who didn't answer. The next obvious choice was to call Dan, her husband (and also the DJ for the evening, which will be important, later). I dialed the number, and Dan picked up by saying, "Erin, I have your marriage license." We made arrangements to get it back from their home in Nashville, where it ended up. Later I got a phone call from Jenna. She told me that she had written down a bunch of info for Dan to use at the reception...but he decided to use the printed out copy on her clipboard for ease of being able to read it (makes sense). However, her clipboard was also where our license was. The plan was to get it to the reception (check), do the intro of the wedding party (check), and then give the license to my mom (oops :)). It ended up working out fine, though, because I just got another copy of the Social Security papers, and Dan's twin brother Sam got married this evening, so Jenna and Dan could just bring it to us in person without having to bother with mailing it.

Dan even thought ahead and brought it with him earlier this week when he came into town so that they could make sure it got here...and it did. For the first time in 2 weeks, our marriage license (of the commemorative variety, mind you) was in the same state as us.

...but...

Dan forgot to bring it with him to the actual wedding :). Heh. So now, we will reunite with our license once we get to California, after it's journey through our United States Postal Service. Good thing we have quite an adventure of our own ahead of us. It would be a bummer if our license had more travel experiences than we did. :) God speed, license. We'll see you soon!

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