Let the Fun Begin!

Well, it's 2008 now, that means less than 6 months to go! It's time for us to get serious planning all of our flying and accommodation surrounding the wedding. But more importantly, it's time for us to say...

"I DO!!! ....really want to get married and can prove it on paper!"

That's right. We have to tell the authorities that we have a desire to get married BEFORE we can set the official date, accompanied by all the rosy-red tape that I'm now getting used to. Required:

1. Birth certificates - of course, mine needed to be translated into German, and Mareike's needed to be mailed from Koblenz. Not the end of the world to have to get this, although kudos to my mom for getting a document from the USA to Germany in three working days.

2. Mareike's family-book - unfortunately, I'm not lucky enough to have one of these. It tells the history of Mareike's family, who her parents are, where they were born, who her grandparents are... We'll get our own family-book, and if I'm really lucky, my name will even make it into Mareike's parents' book, when they enter those details. Also easy-peasy to obtain.

3. (And now the fun part) An Affadavit of Free Status - this is a piece of paper with an official stamp from the American government that says that I have sworn (cross my heart, hope to die) that I am currently unmarried and have never been married. You can't just get this at the corner store. One must travel to American soil: the US Consulate in Frankfurt, where there is a higher security level than Fort Knox. Contraband: anything with batteries, anything that is a liquid or a creme, anything that has a pointy end... you get the idea. They even took our ChapStik and Mareike's compact (Puderdose)! Before we were searched, we had to wait outside in the cold for a solid hour and a half. Fortunately, once we were in, everything went super-fast and super-easy. It's probably the best I've been handled by the authorities since I got here. At any rate, we got the paper and are all set.

So, time to hand in the papers and pick a date, right? Not so fast. First one of us takes the papers to the registrar's office and makes an appointment. The appointment is to come back and sign all of the papers we have just turned in. When the papers have been signed? Are we ready to go then? Hold your horses. The papers get sent to the high court in Karlsruhe to be examined. Then they get the magic "OK" stamp and sent back. Then we get a call on the phone to make an appointment. Then the date is ours!

For all the bureaucracy though, I don't think any of us can complain. This process gets handled a hundred times better than that at the Immigrant Office, and a thousand times better than my saga with the University of Freiburg. I think people are friendlier because they only have to deal with happy stories of couples getting married. There's no jobless, homeless foreigners trying to get permission to stay in the country, and definitely no smart-arsed students who definitely think they have found the way to cheat the system and hopped over to Europe for a PhD, who need to be stopped at all costs, because they can't possibly be as intelligent if they haven't studied for 15 semesters... But I digress. It's actually fun to deal with the people who will be making July 4th (not yet official!) special for us.

On a side note: tomorrow we are going to the Wedding Exposition in Freiburg. It's title is "Trau!", which means both "Get married!" and "Trust!"... Well, okay. Anyway, we'll be reporting on all the things we've seen and heard there over the next couple of days. Dresses and daisies and roses and decoration and... I'll be in the groom's corner, drinking beer and playing video games. I'm kidding, of course. There's cars to look at.