Weddingbee Blog

With a month to go before the big day, Mr. Firefly and I headed down to the NYC Marriage Bureau at the Office of the City Clerk at 1 Centre Street this week. The Marriage Bureau opens at 8:30 am; we arrived 20 minutes early and there was already a bit of a line outside the building (not everyone was there for the Marriage Bureau).

Once upstairs (after passing through metal detectors — what has the world come to!), the entire process took around 30 minutes. It felt like a trip to the DMV — stand on line to get form; fill out form with black ink; stand on line to have man type form into computer (why the black ink if someone is going to type it in anyway?); stand on line to pay and get print-out of marriage license.

No pictures allowed inside, but we took one in the hallway… please ignore my crazy hair!

A few tips:

- Show up early… by the time we were leaving at 9:00 am, each of the lines was considerably longer.

- Both the bride & groom must come together.

- Bring a money order for $35… no checks, no credit cards, no cash.

- Bring your own black pen and a form of ID. Michael and I brought our passports to be safe, but a driver’s license is fine too.