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.
Friday, September 24, 2010
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