Weddingbee Blog

Months back, we found out that our California pastor-friend was not legally allowed to perform marriages in Hawaii.

Well, after a few letters of recommendations and some official filing business done right before the due date of two-and-a-half months prior, he is now allowed to perform one marriage on one specific day in Hawaii. And I sure hope it’s ours. (Kidding!) I’ll have to figure out a good thank-you gift to give him and his family for going through all this legal tape on our behalf!

With that major victory finally won (yay!), I think it’s best to see what other legal hurdles we’ll have to jump over before the wedding day.

First, we’ll need the Hawaii marriage license application. It’s good only for thirty days, so we’ll have to apply for it when we get to Hawaii in July. Luckily, we picked up one of the forms on our trip in December, so we can at least fill it out beforehand. (Though, I found out that the same form is also available online.)

“You want me to change my name to what?!”

Actually, there isn’t anything about name changes on the form. But there is something else that interested me:

Free newspaper announcement? Yes, please! Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick out what it will say, but I still think it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, once we present the filled out form, IDs and sixty dollars, we’ll be all set. We then get married, have our official officiant sign us off, and await a sparkly new license that should appear in our mailbox back home in California. I hope it’s truly as easy as it seems.

I’ve heard that you may need several copies of your marriage certificate after the wedding, especially if you plan on a name change. Though the first certificate is free, I’ll have to pay ten dollars for an extra one, and four dollars for each additional copy after that.

I will be adopting Mr. Sew’s last name after the wedding, though I have no lofty reasoning or good story as to why. I simply like his last name a whole lot, and that’s all. As he had no strong opinions one way or the other either, it looks like we’re skipping out on the whole name-change-debate. All he asked me was whether it would be confusing at all, since I call him by part of his last name (pronounced like “sock”). I don’t think it should be a problem though.

This, I think, is a more common confusing situation:

Me: Where’s my sock at?!

Mr. Sew: What? I’m right here!

So, how many marriage certificates does one person need? And how many hoops does your state/country/etc. require of you?