License to get married

Today we finally got our marriage license. It's nothing fancy, just a form printed on a legal-sized paper.

To get one you have to provide your parents' legal names and their birthplaces. This was an interesting challenge as my mom was born in a village in China. She doesn't know which village so she picked the closet city. Luckily my dad knew his info and provided all that. Daorcey had an easier time as his parents were born in Canada.

Our first attempt to get a license didn't work because Downtown Registry closes their marriage license desk down at 6 p.m. yet fails to mention it anywhere on their website or in their location. So we sat there for 10 minutes before anyone told us it was closed.

Our second attempt landed us at AMA. It didn't take too long, just a lot of data entry on the clerk's part. We also had to swear we'd never been married before. Daorcey got in trouble from the clerk because he started bending the license even though an instruction sheet had that as the first no-no.

All in all, it was a mundane experience, another step towards getting married.