The Wedding License (of Doom)

We're getting pretty close to the wedding, now, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to walk through the process of getting the marriage license. I wanted to wait to write this post until I'd done everything (save for getting married), and now seems like a good time. The good news for all of you future Disney brides and grooms is that the process is actually quite easy. The first thing you have to do is send in the request for a marriage application. Yes, that's right, in true bureaucratic fashion you have to send in an application in order to obtain another application. You can do this via e-mail, and the instructions are available at the Brevard County Clerk of the Court website, and the very specific information that you need can be found under Mail Away Marriage License Information. Girl Scout Fiancée and I downloaded and filled out the form, scanned it, and then transmitted the scanned request to the e-mail provided.

And then there's the request form for the application to request an application...

We very quickly received an automated response that filled us in on our next task: waiting patiently. You see, a Brevard county marriage license is only valid for 60 days; if you don't get married within 60 days of the license application being approved, you have to apply again. Fortunately, the County Clerk makes this nice and easy on you: after you supply them with your wedding date, they refuse to send you the marriage license application until exactly 60 days prior to your wedding date.

Our 60-day mark came and went, and so a couple of days later I fired off an e-mail to the address we'd sent the application to. Within a day we'd not only heard back, but they also provided us with the application. There are actually three forms you'll receive back; one is the marriage record, one is a marriage license affidavit, and one (the affidavit of common children born in Florida) is only relevant if you--wait for it--have children that were born in Florida. Once we got that package of paperwork, we needed to take the documents to a notary. Here's a helpful tip that I completely blanked on: if you work for a company that has its own legal department, check with them first to see if they have a notary on staff. My company does, but I completely forgot to check into that, and like a sucker we went to our local UPS store where the notary charged us $25 for his services. It's not bank-breaking, but that's $25 I didn't have to spend. Anyways, in the presence of the notary, we filled out the relevant fields on both the marriage record and the affadavit, and the notary signed and stamped in the relevant places.

I guess he used the $24 ink pad for the stamp.

Once the application to marry is signed and notarized, you send it back to the Brevard County Clerk (this time, via normal physical mail), along with the application fee. At the time of this writing, that fee is $93.50, which has to come in the form of a check or money order, because we still apparently live in the 20th century. Now, you can mail it normal post, but I opted to send it FedEx overnight (from my office, so the company discount knocks the cost down a bit), so the total cost of applying ran us about $135.

FedEx whisked our paperwork away, and within a day I had received the confirmation e-mail that told me that it had safely reached its destination. Again we played the waiting game, and this time we received the marriage record back in the mail (the physical mail, as in, from the Post Office) about a week later. The marriage record now has information filled out by the Brevard County Clerk, and a notarized seal, meaning that we're now two-thirds of the way through the marriage license process.

Stay on target. Stay on target!

Now all that remains is for us to actually get married. Once the ceremony is over, our officiant will fill out the final section, and we have the option (though it is not required) to have folks sign the marriage record as witnesses. The record will then be sealed up once more and FedExed back to the Brevard County Clerk, where it will be processed and then an actual marriage license will be mailed to us. Our plan is to entrust the mailing of the marriage license to someone else (likely our officiant, or my best man) since Girl Scout Fiancée and I will be too preoccupied with our honeymoon to do so. Then, it will all be legal!