recap part 3

The kindly housemate took my note saying do not disturb me very seriously. Apparently she fended off several calls wondering where I was. She even made sure that Fiance didn’t wake me up when he dropped by! I woke up at about 9:30 and felt like I never wanted to get out of bed and face the world. I was still totally in a funk and knew I’d need to get out of it.

I called fiance and we discussed the marriage license that we would need to get that day. I had done all the research about cost, what to bring and where to obtain it. The only hitch? Do to the economy, the local office had shut down. It seemed that the nearest office was an hour and a half away and only available by appointment! There were no appointments available for that day.

Fiance came over and we tried to brainstorm. I looked him in the eye and asked, “Is somebody trying to tell us not to get married?” Seriously, so far it had been roadblock after roadblock. Thinking outside the box, we started looking at municipalities outside the Tahoe area to obtain a license. Finally, here came our first ray of sunshine. There was a no-appointment necessary place at the Nevada County office, which was actually closer than the other one. Score one for the DGs!

It was already hotter than blazes at about 10 am, and I was thinking “Uh oh, is it going to be this hot on wedding day? I might not do so well in this kind of heat!”

We got to the office, handed in our paperwork and felt a little triumphant for a minute. I should never feel triumphant…

The county clerk informed me that my driver’s license had just expired. (I had not received a notice, nor was I aware that this was the case prior to leaving Seattle). Not only was I not sure that she would issue our license, but we were far from home and planning to drive to our honeymoon. This was not good!

Luckily, I had my passport with me and my old California Driver’s license. The kind official decided not to make a big deal about the expired license. I could have just hugged her!

Then, the county clerk told us about the Name Equality Act in California. To avoid having to file a court order to change names, we were going to have to decide right then and there what we wanted to do with our names. Now, we had talked about this extensively (because I wanted to keep my last name), but we also decided that we wouldn’t need to officially decide until after we were married. All of a sudden we went from having all the time in the world to having about 3 minutes to decide what we wanted to do. Yipes!

Due to professional issues, I was pretty committed to keeping my last name. But, both of us felt that we wanted to do something to acknowledge our new partnership. We had discussed taking his adorable last name as a middle name… but that didn’t really solve the problem, since it didn’t reflect any change in his status. We asked the clerk, “Can we do anything we want?” She affirmed this and our eyes lit up. I could take his name as a middle name and he could take my name as a second middle name! It felt egalitarian and transformational at the same time. It was an option we could both live with ☺

License in hand, we headed to the wedding site for the first time. At last, I felt like the fates couldn’t stop this marriage from happening. Now, about those chalkboards…