Wedding Blog

Thanks to our wonderful travel agent, we have rebooked our anniversary trip to the Bahamas for two weeks from now. Because we wanted to activate the travel insurance we bought, we did not try to get my passport renewed in order to leave a day or two later. Also, we will both be participating in a bike tour for Multiple Sclerosis this Sunday and wanted to be back in town by Friday. In the end, our agent was able to reschedule our trip for the same rate and our new plane tickets are actually cheaper than our original tickets (Jet Blue charges a $35 cancellation fee per ticket and then gives you credit for the remaining balance).

Since I have a confirmed itinerary for travel outside of the U.S. within 14 days, I can go to the New York Passport Agency and renew my passport in person. In order to go to the Passport Agency, you must make an appointment through the Agency’s automated telephone service. Since a few commenters in my earlier post said they have been able to go early to the Agency without an appointment, I called and spoke with a representative to see if I might be able to do that as well. She emphatically told me that I could not. She said that they have been lenient about letting in “campers” before but since stricter passport requirements went in effect this past January (travel outside the U.S. with a valid passport OR birth certificate) and even stricter requirements October 1, 2007 (travel outside the U.S. with a valid passport ONLY), they will no longer let anyone without an appointment confirmation number into the building. She was so belligerent, I almost wanted to camp out this morning just to try and prove her wrong. Alas, I am back to work today so I made an appointment through their automated service and the next available appointment is this Friday afternoon.

The other alternative is to use one of any number of private rush services found by a simple google search for “rush passport” but this option comes at a much higher cost.

Lastly, I want to thank you all for the wonderfully supportive comments as they really meant a lot to me in my time of distress.