This post has been long overdue, and it won’t even be a good one because the courthouse wedding wasn’t very long or very interesting :D.
Something that might be good to know for my non-US readers is that a couple of civil services(among which is marriages) are dealt with by the Osceola county clerk and his staff in the courthouse and not at city hall. Not entirely sure if they even have a city hall like we’re used to in the Netherlands. NB. “regular” ID cards are handled by the Department of Motor Vehicles(DMV), who is also in charge of driving licenses and voter registration. Strange but true.
So, first things first. In order to get married in Florida, one must first purchase a marriage license($93.50) and then wait for three days before it becomes valid for 60 days. While it’s possible to get a discount and a waiving on those three days, we decided to just wait it out. It involves spending time in some sort of pre-marriage counseling class which costs about as much as the money you “save” with the discount. Don’t really need somebody to tell me how to share responsibilities and how to deal with our shared pool of money anyway.
After obtaining the license we had to pick a date to go back there to have the wedding performed. The date we picked is the same date as my birthday and so easy to remember. Since we applied for the license on the 19th of March(3 days after I arrived in the US), we had ample time to look for rings.
The day of the actual wedding the courthouse was practically empty, which kind of came as a surprise considering the amount of time we spent waiting in line the first time we were there. Handed over the license to the lady, who promptly directed us to a separate, and somewhat sterile, room where the simple ceremony was supposed to take place.
License stamped and just like that we were married. And have been for almost two months now.