Generally, I'm one who likes to enjoy the journey as much as arriving at the destination. But waiting until the end of August for our second wedding is going to drive me crazy! Hopefully I’ll be able to travel to Mexico to see Ana within the month.
The copies of our marriage license arrived last week with Ana’s biographical form and birth certificate. I was working out of town again and didn't pick them up until Friday. I'm starting to get the marriage license and Ana's birth certificate translated and hope to submit the application this week. We still have over 11 weeks until the wedding to get the 8 week process completed.
History
The weeks following Christmas were filled with phone calls and chat sessions where we planned the next trip and more specific wedding plans. We researched the immigration options during this time and looked into the licensing requirements for Ana to practice here. I had a project in Houston, TX in January and Ana met me there for a weekend. Her family has relatives there that they haven’t seen in over 10 years. We spent a day with them. I enjoyed watching them catch up on family news and sharing pictures. I learned a new work too. Before coming to visit, Ana was talking with her aunt and told her about me. Her aunt exclaimed, you’re dating a “bolillo”!? Apparently, I am “plain white bread.” So now I’m trying to think of breads that are made with brown sugar. We joked about the new name and had a great time with the family in Houston on Saturday. Some of them came to church and lunch with us on Sunday as well.
I made a couple more trips in March and April. On one of those trips, Nery’s fiancé, Farzin, was there at the same time. Farzin was born in Iran and is a dentist in Illinois. I don’t think the parents knew what to think that week with such variety in the house. As always, we had a great time eating, talking, translating and sight-seeing. One night at dinner, I was trying to tell a story in my broken Spanish. Ana was helping it along in Spanish for her parents and Nery was translating it back into English for Farzin. It was a very comical, ironic moment. Another night, Nery, Farzin, Gaby, Ana and I were having dinner at a nice Italian restaurant and Laina, a friend from Indiana sent me a text message asking me if we were married yet. I replied “No, but we’re enjoying the honeymoon.” Laina was having dinner with several other friends at the time and I got several responses asking “What??!!” On the menu was a “Honeymoon Salad” that Ana and I were sharing. I took a picture of it and sent it to everyone later. I don’t know what they were all thinking.
Laina asked the wedding question because we were hoping to start the process for the civil ceremony on one of these trips. We had been told that there was a 35 day waiting process once I applied for permission to marry in Mexico. There are several steps to go through when applying for permission. Ana had already acquired an instruction page listing all the documents we needed. Documents from the US need to have an apostille attached. An apostille is a state certification of a county document. They are available from the Secretary of State’s office in each state. Each Secretary of State can only certify documents from their respective state. I discovered this when trying to get an apostille in Indiana for my California birth certificate. Because of that oversight, we weren’t able to do anything in March. Thanks to my mother’s help, I was finally able to get the apostille for my birth certificate in time for the April trip. We drove two hours to the immigration office to apply for permission to marry. We started at the information desk to get directions. There are over a dozen desks or windows to visit depending on what you want to accomplish. We were sent to our first location to get the payment form. We then had to find a bank to pay the fee since the government offices don’t accept payments. We returned, with our receipt and a couple more copies of documents, to the next station where our documents were inspected and accepted. At the third station, the documents were reviewed and we were told that there was no 35 day waiting period, it was only 7-10 days. That was the good news. The bad news was that I couldn’t leave the country until after the wedding. Unfortunately, I only had three days available before returning to complete a critical project. We had to wait until the next trip when I could plan on staying long enough to complete the process.
The next trip was in May when we were able to complete the application and we had the civil wedding. This part of the story is told back in the first entry. Therefore, this concludes the historical overview. Occasionally I think of additional events or Ana reminds me of something interesting that happened along the way. I’ll add those in new posts along with the progress reports. By the time we are married, someone should be able to use our experiences to understand a little more of the immigration process. I’ll continue to add links to the variety of resources needed to enjoy the process.
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