Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, I am happy to announce that as of March 14th Abhinav and I are OFFICIALLY married. Yes, I know I sound crazy now...and no, I didn't forget that our wedding ceremony was February 18th, but its taken this long to get our marriage recognized by the government of India. This week we finally received our official marriage certificate as recognized by the state. The reason I have to mention something that may seem like a simple piece of paper with writing is because this simple piece of paper took quite a bit of work to receive; I treasure this simple piece of paper because of the effort put into its making.
The beginning of our marriage finalization began by trying to acquire our first marriage certificate as given by the religious place in which our ceremony was held. Abhinav's father was able to make a few phone calls and request that we receive our certificate faster than normal (within ten days). Abhinav and I traveled to the next city to receive the certificate, only to find many spelling errors (converting American names from Hindi characters back to English isn't easy for someone who has never seen that name) so we had to have the certificate remade.
After our religious certificate was received we filed for our government certificate with all the necessary paperwork. Abhinav's father has a lawyer-friend who was able to help us prepare all the necessary documents we would need. When we arrived at the court the first time to finalize our marriage, we found out that one very important document was missing- a No Objection letter from the United States showing that I have never before been married. This meant that we had to schedule an appointment with the U.S. Embassy, travel to New Delhi, and request the No Objection letter. Thankfully everything went smoothly within the Embassy and we were able to get this document within one week.
We returned to the court and met with what I would call a judge, or person who affirmed and approved our documents. Everything seemed to go smoothly, we signed all the necessary paperwork, gave fingerprints, had our photos taken for official records, I was even surprised at the well wishes and congrats given to us from the judge. Though sadly, our marriage filing couldn't be complete without paying a bribe to the judge, which he later requested from Abhinav's parents when we had left the room. Many times in India, if you want something done you will be asked to give some extra amount of money. Regardless, about three weeks after our court house finalization, we received our marriage certificate.
