Right before our 10th anniversary, P.J. and I have hit upon a way to keep our married life really exciting.
Like, “edge of your seat” exciting.
Like, wait, are we really even married exciting.
So.
We’re heading out of town next month- out of the country, in fact- Mexico, in fact fact- and I realized that a) my passport needed updating, and b) my last name had never been updated after our wedding. No problem! (Other than the fact that I hadn’t traveled overseas in almost 10 years!)
The passport agency needed copies of my driver’s license (which was updated) and our marriage license- of which we had many churchy ones to choose from. (Why did we get so many copies on so many notarized pieces of stationary? Who knows? One of those crazy “wedding” things, I guess.) Submitted the online fee, sent the whole shebang in, and began daydreaming about tiny umbrellas in my drink.
Two weeks later, I received an email from the passport agency. Turns out they couldn’t process my application with a marriage certificate. A real one, they meant. Not a church one (or two or three).
(Which is weird, because the church one got my name updated on my driver’s license, and my driver’s license got my name updated on my social security card, but apparently those government-approved i.d.s aren’t good enough proof for a third government-approved i.d.)
No problem, we’d just grab our actual marriage license from…wait, where is that thing again? It’s in the lockbox, right?
Wait.
It wasn’t…anywhere. Wait. We have one, right?
We applied for our marriage license in Boston and, the day after the wedding, mailed it back off to City Hall from Western Massachusetts.
…Right?
So P.J. called the good state of Massachusetts.
And they told him that they couldn’t guarantee it was there but, if we paid about $79, they’d expedite an envelope to Chicago. And in this envelope? Either a piece of paper proving our legitimate nuptials in May of 2008…
…Or a piece of paper saying that we weren’t exactly on file. Anywhere. (Except the church. A lot.)
TALK ABOUT A NAIL-BITER!
A lot of thoughts were thought. Like:
- If we weren’t actually married, would we have to do a town hall thing so I could update my damn passport?
- Wouldn’t that be hilarious?
- Could we invite our friends?
- Nora and Suzy would go bonkers to be flower girls.
- Wait, are we living in sin?
- (No, not with that many church certificates.)
- Have we been defrauding our taxes for the last 10 years?
- Can we have a second honeymoon?
- Where should we go? How about Mexico?
- …Wait.
We didn’t worry too much about it. (Not really.) I mean, the envelope would contain the license. (Right?) And for the next two days, we didn’t think about it. (Too much.)
But, like, what if we weren’t legally married but had lived this sorta/kinda lie where we told people we were married but we were actually free agents*?!
(*With three kids, three cats, a mortgage and a Honda Odyssey.)
And even though it didn’t really change anything- and even though the imminent envelope was a bit of a Schrodinger’s Cat scenario…it was still fairly saucy. Saucy-ish. Thursday night saucy.
But yesterday afternoon, a certified envelope arrived.
And, turns out, we’re totally married.
Phew.
Honeymoon’s over.
So I rushed to the post office to expedite the certificate back to the passport peeps…
…only to notice…
…the return label they had pre-printed a week ago?
Totally included my “new” married name. Which means it’s already in their system.
Jerks.
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