It's official: Huyen and I are legally married! After months of dealing with the Ha Nam justice department, we've finally gotten our marriage license.
Fittingly, the closest I came to snapping was on the afternoon of the 20th. For the 100th time, I asked Huyen to call the Ha Nam office and ask them what the delay was since they were legally a month over the time limit to process our marriage paperwork. While on the phone with Huyen, I almost lost it telling her to demand an answer from the office. Two minutes later Huyen called me back and said, "I canceled our marriage." I naturally said, "Thank god. I knew this was a huge mistake," and then she happily said, "Kidding! Our license is ready!".
The next afternoon we drove to Ha Nam and had our very romantic legal ceremony. Basically we were brought up to a conference room and the guy who interviewed us stood in front of us and talked a lot in Vietnamese. When he finished speaking Huyen said, "He wants to know if you still want to get married." I smiled -- not knowing if Huyen was tricking me into something dastardly since I couldn't understand a word the guy said except my name -- and replied that I did. The man then had us sign two copies of the wedding license and then put our names into the Ha Nam wedding registry.
After we took our first wedding picture with the man who married us (see top picture). Some people say that marriage is like a prison. Well, my first wedding photo sure felt like a mug shot.
As I've written on here in the past, getting the license was a formality for us to begin immigration processing to the United States. Huyen and I consider our actually wedding to be 12/19 when we celebrate at her family's house.
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13 comments:
Yey the paper work stress is over and the celebration can begin! Less than 3 months to go!!!!
Congrats Ben & Huyen!!!!!
Congrat to you two!!!
Thanks! The Vietnamese paperwork is over. The stress is just starting with the American paperwork. Wait for the post in a couple days about Step 1 for immigration. We literally had over 200 pages of documents/forms to submit.
Congratulations! Looking forward to reading about the December wedding.
Congratulations!
Congrats, mates!
Happy together!
congrats ben
Congrats! Do you know that Huyen can only come to the US with you as your fiance. You have to obtain a US marriage certificate before the immigration would consider you are legally married.
In regards to comment #10: I'm 99% sure you're wrong. There are three ways to come to America:
1. Bring your fiance
2. Bring over your wife/family member
3. Bring over your wife if you have been living abroad (called Direct Consular Filing)
There are international treaties regarding marriage so if you're married in Vietnam it applies in America. Having just done the paperwork for Step 1 of immigration, one of the documents required was our marriage license with a translation. I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't need to translate an American wedding certificate.
yay, congratulations!!
Congrats! Where is the picture?
yay! congratulations, ben & huyen!! =o)))
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