This week has been a whirlwind of wedding plans, trying to figure out and organize paperwork to satisfy the French authorities for translation of our American wedding license into the proper French documents, and to top it off, it was a short 3-day work week here in France because there was a national holiday Thursday, another one on Monday, and in between a lot of people take the Friday off to get the full five day mini-break.
Not that we have time to go anywhere right now. Holiday or no holiday, we both have a ton of work to do for our jobs.
Let me start by describing the less pleasant aspects of marrying a French citizen, and I'm totally referring to the quagmire of red tape the French authorities throw at you when you're not a citizen of another E.U. country. First of all, know that it's quicker/easier for us to actually get married (i.e. the ceremony part) in my home state of NJ. In "Joisey", we walk into the town hall with our ID, a witness over 18 with a drivers license, and $28 to apply for our marriage license. Three days later, we get the license and can then be married by anyone in the state who is licensed to perform marriages. No physicals or blood tests required. If we wanted to get married in France, we'd have to do things like provide a document stating that no one in France objects to our marriage, get physicals with letters from doctors, publish "bans" two weeks before, and there's a lot more personal documentation needed. Add to this that my family is in New Jersey and since I won't be seeing them much from now on they deserve to at least see me get married.
Most people think it's the planning of the wedding that makes a bride into a Bride-zilla, but in my case it's what comes AFTER the wedding itself that gets crazy-making. After the ceremony and party at my sister's home, Georges and I will sneak off for two nights to a B&B at the lovely Jersey Shore. So we'll be back on Monday some time. On Tuesday or Wednesday, I will need to pick up our official copies of the wedding license, and of course we need a bunch of those so I can orchestrate name changes on everything from my social security card to my bank accounts, credit cards, and passport.
But the main reason we have to rush to get the license is that we next have to go into New York City to the French Consulate. There, we provide them with the license and all kinds of other documents to prove who we are, and they will generate the French "Acte de Mariage" and the "Livret de Famille", both of which you get when you get married in France. Without them, our marriage will not be recognized in France. We have to go in person to do this and I suspect they will also interview us together and possibly separately to judge whether this is the real deal or a fake. Not that we have any worries on THAT score. If we're lucky we can squeeze in a little sightseeing that same day.
And then there's the FUN part of the wedding planning. Even though this is going to be a very small wedding, there are still a lot of details to take care of. I spent about 90 minutes on the phone with a good caterer I know (Country Picnic) giving them the info so they can give me a quote, and we can nail down the details and cross THAT off the list. And checking out wedding night accommodations was also fun, and at least I've got that narrowed down to 3 possible choices after over four hours of research (maybe I'll run a blog contest to let you all vote for your favorite).
Last but not least there is managing the costs. The airfares are unbelievable (and I mean that in a bad way), given that it's summer and what fuel prices are going for. Our two plane tickets will probably cost more than the entire wedding AND the cost of all the immigration paperwork put together, that's how bad it is. I found out yesterday that if we fly Continental, they're the cheapest, but if we fly on Monday morning instead of Sunday we can save nearly $500 USD PER PERSON, and that's HUGE. So we're going to fly on Monday, arrive around lunchtime in NJ, race to my mother's place and pick her up as our witness, and go to the town hall get the wedding license the very first thing.
I feel like the Road Runner, only he never seems to run out of steam, and I'm exhausted.
But I still can't stop smiling. Especially when I am sitting here blogging, and Georges is sitting across from me at the kitchen table, and he says, "I love you"... for no reason other than he does.
