We Have Our Marriage License

We now have a marriage license. We got it on Friday, down at City Hall, and overall it was a pretty quick process though we did run into some bumps.

We arrived at City Hall at about 10:30 am, went over to the marriage license area, filled out the form (because we screwed up filling out the form we’d printed off) and then wandered over to a desk.

The woman there asked us for ID that contained our names as they would appear on the licence. I gave my driver’s license and that was fine. But then we discovered that Shawn didn’t have any ID on him that contained his full middle name; for some reason his driver’s license just had his initial.

So then we had two choices. We could head home, find Shawn’s birth certificate and then come back with that or we could apply for the license with Shawn’s middle name just being an initial. The woman warned us that the second option could potentially lead to issues down the road though she wasn’t quite sure what they would be. Another woman who seemed to be working at the same desk then piped up that our situation wasn’t that uncommon and that many people just went with an initial or no middle name at all.

So we decided to risk it and just go with the initial. Once that was decided upon, we were given a number and then had to wait about 15 minutes before moving on to the second and final desk.

I have to say that the marriage license department was, at least to me, surprisingly unbusy. There were a few other couples there but most of them were out-of-towners getting licenses so that they could marry during Pride weekend. I thought we would have to be there as early as possible to avoid a lengthy wait but thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Anyway, our number got called, we went to a desk, the woman there checked out IDs again, got us to double-check the form, then entered all the info into the computer, printed out the form and got us to double-check and sign that.

Then we got to pay, conveniently at the same desk we were already at. Normally you can pay using a credit or debit card but the system was down because of the HST or something that didn’t really make any sense so we got to pay $130 in cash. So that was annoying.

But we got our license as well as the form you need to fill out and submit to get your physical marriage certificate (I thought you’d be automatically sent that but apparently not). The license was placed in a City-addressed envelope that we were to give to our officiant prior to the wedding day.

Since our minister’s church is located downtown, we then headed over there and dropped off the envelope. And that was that.

So here are a few tips for you about getting your marriage license:

• Make sure you bring government-issued ID that contains your full name
• If this ID doesn’t contain a photo, also bring a piece of government-issued photo ID
• If you can, fill out your form in advance
• Bring a pen
• Bring something to occupy yourself just in case you do have a long wait
• Try to go in the morning, it’s generally less busy then
• And yes, you both need to be there