Ah, wedding planning! Who doesn’t love the bliss of cake tasting, dress shopping, make-up trials … and administrative paperwork?

I’ve had “get marriage license” prominent on my wedding to-do/doing/done board for much longer than I’d like to admit — chiefly because I am paperwork-adverse. (I also, admittedly, have a habit of messing up on the details like putting down the wrong Social Security number or spelling my own name wrong — two things I’ve actually done before on government paperwork.)

According to my married friends, getting a license should be easy. For us … not so much. We did have one built-in obstacle:

We’re getting married 175 miles away from Philadelphia, in a different state. Still, even as a two-person job our experience was fraught with (our own) bone-headed mistakes and (the City’s) convoluted bureaucracy.

Steps Taken:

1. 1. Print out a marriage application from the Maryland court website.
   2. Skimming through the details on the document about how to file the application, I groan at “Application must be submitted” in person (that’s three-and-a-half hours away from Philly), then sigh with relief at “or mailed in.” I groan again at the last bit: “Must be signed by a comparable official.”
   3. Have future-husband call City Hall to see if there is a “comparable official” there who can sign the document. There is, and they remind us: Bring your IDs. Great, one trip to City Hall is all it should take … right?
   4. Wrong! Arrive at City Hall at 3:30pm and wander aimlessly until we can find some sort of signage that points us in the right direction to the Register of Wills. After about five minutes, future-husband calls to ask for help. A receptionist in the office answers, rudely reports that they are closed, and proceeds to hang up on future-husband. He calls back to find out what their hours are — and no one answers.
   5. The next day, we try again, this time right when they open. A kind gentleman standing in the courtyard points us in the right direction. We go through security and finally make it to Room 413: the Marriage License Office.
   6. Whoops! Turns out we need our Social Security cards and future-husband’s divorce decree, in addition to our IDs. (We should have done our homework; all of this is listed on the City’s website.) We ask the clerk if there’s any way we can proceed without these documents. Alas, of course, we can’t. She does kindly say she can accept a PDF of the divorce decree, and digital copies of our W2s — which we have on our phones — for our Socials.
   7. Future-husband calls the Clark County, Georgia office to see if they can email him the divorce decree. They can’t. They say he must come in person. He scoffs. 740 miles away for a piece of paper! The clerk backtracks and says he can try filling out a form online to have it mailed. We leave City Hall once again empty-handed.
   8. The next day, future-husband fills out the online form request for a divorce decree. Turns out you can just download a PDF online. So we could have stayed at City Hall the day before.
   9. For the third time, we return to City Hall. This time, the security guard almost doesn’t let me in the building because her computer cannot accept my passport as an ID. (She uses my partner’s ID instead.) We get to the office and are informed that the person who usually signs the marriage applications is out sick. Apparently, they have near-perfect attendance … except for today.
   10. The clerk must have seen the “Are you [redacted explicative] kidding me” boiling over on my face because she said, “I’ll ask my supervisor if I can do it.” Luckily, she can. She doesn’t ask for our Social Security cards or my partner’s divorce decree.
   11. She stamps the document, which I’m now noticing has grease stains on it from all of its travels (whoops), and they charge us $75. They seemed to stumble with the POS system so I confirm that we’re being charged for the administrative fees — and not for an actual marriage license. Yep, here in Philadelphia a stamp will cost you $75.
   12. Now we have our document signed and ready to go to the good state of Maryland … which apparently only takes payment via money order. Insult to injury: Our post office is out of money orders that day. Still, our journey with Philadelphia’s Marriage License Department is over. We have what we need from them and now our fate lies with another state.

Time Spent: Four-and-a-half hours for time spent at City Hall, travel back and forth between and administrative research.

Cost: $75

Result: A marriage license … almost.

Takeaways: Alright, I’ll admit it — many of our obstacles were of our own volition. Lesson learned: Don’t try to breeze through paperwork for major life changes. Like most wedding planning, careful attention to the details will save you time, money and effort in the long run. We should have read the website more carefully to know when they are open and what we’d need to complete the form.

However, confusing messages from the marriage license office, curt phone calls and lack of a streamlined process made this a total headache. And now as I wait for Maryland to get back to us on the status of our application, I can’t help but worry … is that whole thing about not taking our Social Security cards and divorce decree going to cause us problems down the line?

Lightning bolt rating out of 5: (Because at the end of the day, at least I got what I needed to marry the man that I love.)

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