Marriage certificate

[R&OC 371]

Dear all,

 

we are so new to this experience and I am having all sorts of different questions again. I am currently collecting all the documents while he's deployed so that my fiancé and I have all the right documents in hand when we get married after his deployment.

 

I am not sure I understand the regulations regarding the marriage certificate. We will be getting married in California (if all fails, then the fall back is Las Vegas but I am not sure I want this). On the day of the ceremony, will we be receiving a certificate that we can use for the visa process or do we apply for certified copies and have to wait another 21-28 days?

 

I am teaching and therefore would love to work another year in my home country before leaving for the US next year. However, we are tied to school terms and we are trying to aim for the next summer term fully knowing that processing times are wild card sometimes.

 

Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

 

[NDB052714 122]

Hi. This may actually vary from state to state, and processes may vary slightly from county to county within a given state. In North Carolina, the couple applies for the marriage license in advance of the wedding (up to 60 days prior, I believe) through the register of deeds office (at the county courthouse); in our county the couple may apply for the license online but must appear in person to pick it up. Then the couple takes the license with them to the wedding. (The officiant won't perform the ceremony without the license). The officiant will usually sign and date the license immediately before the wedding (and the witnesses, if required, must sign then as well. Then the officiant is responsible for filing the signed license with the register of deeds within a specified number of days after the wedding. Then a few days after that period the couple may request via email or in person certified copies of the marriage license. I think we got 6 copies. 

 

Be sure to look at the marriage license carefully at the wedding after everyone signs...just to be sure everyone has signed and dated properly and correctly. In our case the priest had dated with the wrong year (he used 2017 instead of 2016). No one noticed until a few days later when we went to the Social Security office to get Noom's new card with his married name. The clerk noticed immediately! Fortunately, she was a kind person and just laughed and didn't make us jump through administrative hoops getting it sorted. We just had to go back to the courthouse and the register of deeds office to get it corrected. It could have been a mess later for sure! 

 

Best of luck to you. 

 

~David & Noom

[R&OC 371]

Okay, thank you! 

[muffin17 7]

We got married at the county clerk in Southern CA so our marriage licenses was created right before the ceremony and then it was filed immediately after. We received our marriage certificates about 3 weeks later. If you are ok with waiting longer than that, I don't think Vegas or CA matters much. We preferred to get married locally so I could swing by in person to pick them up ASAP. We also only got two certified copies as the clerk advised most places will just make a copy of the original anyway. The certified copies are what you need to adjust, not the license. Good luck and congrats!