Wedding License woes
Akis and I woke up on Tuesday and our plans for the day were to meet the clan in Plaka and spend the day with them. Around 10am we received a call on his mobile phone ~ and with Call Display, Akis turned to me and said do you know who this number is?? Response: No, but you had better answer it. As it turned out, it was the Town Hall in Petroupoli saying that there were problems with our wedding license and we needed to go out right away. So much for a leisurely day in Plaka.
As Akis told the story, I wasn't overly surprised as I was able to piece together some of the Greek and figure out that there were problems with our papers. However I thought that it was a problem with my papers and that would be much more difficult to fix. In fact, it was a problem with his papers ~ spelling mistakes... So off we went in the car and drove to Petroupoli.
Once we arrived we determined that the names on the wedding license don't match what we had translated from my birth certificate ~ i.e. I was listed as just 'Carrie', not 'Carrie Lynn'. So with a photo copy of the original translation, we were off to Piraeus to talk to the women in this Town Hall. I sat in the car and waited for Akis to deal with them as we hadn't had a great experience with them in the past for being overly helpful... Akis was gone for about 40 minutes and this was the point when I was really starting to panic. He returned to the car and recounted his story. When Akis originally applied for the wedding license, we needed to provide a clipping from the newspaper stating our intent to marry. The Town Hall is suppose to take all of the information off the application form which is filled out, however in this case she managed to take the information from the Newspaper clipping ~ and yes, the Newspaper clipping had only first names for myself, Mom and Dad... After explaining to the women that we are getting married on Saturday and we need the paper, they got a bit snotty and said, well we take the information off the application form and let's just see what you put down here, cause if the license is wrong, so is what you put on the application. As it turns out, no, the application was right, and the office should never have accepted the application if the newpaper clipping didn't have all the information. So begrudgingly the woman made the corrections, stamped the paper and then asked Akis why it was he wasn't marrying a good Greek girl... Good Lord!
So we then took the modified license out to Petroupoli where we waited for them to give us the thumbs up. Without even looking at it, they told us it was OK, but you can imagine the angst that we felt wondering if it would come to Saturday and we have no papers.
Ironically enough, this put many things into perspective. I had become a bit of a Bridezilla and really, who cares what colour the flowers are, or what the song will be. What is important is that you are getting married and for a bit I had lost sight of that. Oddly enough, the song that we used to cut the cake, found it on the radio as we were heading to Plaka to recount our day to the family... See it does all work out in the end.
As Akis told the story, I wasn't overly surprised as I was able to piece together some of the Greek and figure out that there were problems with our papers. However I thought that it was a problem with my papers and that would be much more difficult to fix. In fact, it was a problem with his papers ~ spelling mistakes... So off we went in the car and drove to Petroupoli.
Once we arrived we determined that the names on the wedding license don't match what we had translated from my birth certificate ~ i.e. I was listed as just 'Carrie', not 'Carrie Lynn'. So with a photo copy of the original translation, we were off to Piraeus to talk to the women in this Town Hall. I sat in the car and waited for Akis to deal with them as we hadn't had a great experience with them in the past for being overly helpful... Akis was gone for about 40 minutes and this was the point when I was really starting to panic. He returned to the car and recounted his story. When Akis originally applied for the wedding license, we needed to provide a clipping from the newspaper stating our intent to marry. The Town Hall is suppose to take all of the information off the application form which is filled out, however in this case she managed to take the information from the Newspaper clipping ~ and yes, the Newspaper clipping had only first names for myself, Mom and Dad... After explaining to the women that we are getting married on Saturday and we need the paper, they got a bit snotty and said, well we take the information off the application form and let's just see what you put down here, cause if the license is wrong, so is what you put on the application. As it turns out, no, the application was right, and the office should never have accepted the application if the newpaper clipping didn't have all the information. So begrudgingly the woman made the corrections, stamped the paper and then asked Akis why it was he wasn't marrying a good Greek girl... Good Lord!
So we then took the modified license out to Petroupoli where we waited for them to give us the thumbs up. Without even looking at it, they told us it was OK, but you can imagine the angst that we felt wondering if it would come to Saturday and we have no papers.
Ironically enough, this put many things into perspective. I had become a bit of a Bridezilla and really, who cares what colour the flowers are, or what the song will be. What is important is that you are getting married and for a bit I had lost sight of that. Oddly enough, the song that we used to cut the cake, found it on the radio as we were heading to Plaka to recount our day to the family... See it does all work out in the end.
posted by Carrie @ 7:12 AM
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