Getting a marriage license in Illinois is no small matter. You have to get your license in the county in which you will marry.
For Will County, where Mr. Kettle and I had our Big Fat Fancy Wedding, you could get your license anywhere from 24 hours to 60 days before your ceremony. Once we hit the 60 day mark, we kept making plans to get our license, and those plans kept falling through.
Mr. Kettle is a teacher. You'd think that with 2 weeks off from school plus my light holiday schedule at work, we'd make it happen. Not so. And as we got closer to the wedding and I got more and more resentful, we really couldn't find the time to make it happen.
It wasn't until Mr. Kettle suggested we move up the actual wedding day with a private ceremony ahead of time that things got real. With three less days to finish planning, we finally got into action. Once our officiants agreed to do another wedding for us, we got our license that same day.
There were still a couple days between that and telling our parents, but at least we got it done. I was almost eager to get the license in Cook County where our early wedding would be.
If we had managed to get our Will County license, things would have been much tougher. We would have had to send in the previous license and have it cancelled before we got the new one, and we just didn't have that kind of time. I feel very blessed that it worked out for us.
Has procrastinating on a major aspect of your wedding planning worked out in your favor?
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Getting Married Once or Twice, Part Three
When I left off, Mr. Kettle and I got our wedding license in a county other than the one we were supposed to get married in on our wedding day.
We had one more meeting each with our two officiants. At this meeting, we let them know of our intentions to get married early. They were both a bit taken aback, but in support of us doing it as long as it wasn't some faux-elope attempt on our part. When we said we wanted our parents and immediate families involved, their relief was palpable.
Once we had a day picked out, a wedding license, and the cooperation of our officiants, we told our parents. My parents were not okay with it at first. They didn't advise against it, but their displeasure was obvious. If you had shelled out thousands of dollars for someone's wedding, you'd be pretty upset that they chose to have a different wedding too.
Mr. Kettle's parents were more okay with it, but their general response to him is usually okay. If he thinks it's a good idea, they do too, generally. My parents weren't thrilled, but they were on board. All that was left was inviting our siblings, my grandmother, a couple of close family friends, and a musician to play the organ.
I told Mr. Kettle I wanted 12-20 people there. Including us, there ended up being exactly 20. It was very intimate and private and special. We just wore whatever and my maid of honor got us flowers on the way over for the day.
We had a simple ceremony. Vows, exchanging rings, communion, and a lot of tears. When I get around to re-capping the ceremony on Saturday, you'll see it was such a different atmosphere.
After the ceremony, everyone looked so happy. My parents were wiping away tears and so were his parents. It felt so rigth to me to be getting married with just those people. There were a lot of family and friends who weren't there that Wednesday who were there on Saturday, but I was okay.
I looked forward to Saturday after that. All I'd wanted Saturday to be was a big party and a celebration with a lot of people we care about. Now that's all it was in my head. No more 600 eye nightmares. Just looking forward to wearing a beautiful dress and eating some fantastic food.
There is an extra benefit to getting married earlier. We chose our wedding day because of it's proximity to Mardi Gras. I wanted our anniversary to fall before Mardi Gras every year. By moving it up 3 days, we will have that now. Since Mardi Gras is an important holiday to us as a couple, I'm pretty psyched by this development.
Okay, before I start my recaps, I'll finish with the DIY projects I completed before going into my guest-list funk.
Did you chosen wedding day change for any reason?
We had one more meeting each with our two officiants. At this meeting, we let them know of our intentions to get married early. They were both a bit taken aback, but in support of us doing it as long as it wasn't some faux-elope attempt on our part. When we said we wanted our parents and immediate families involved, their relief was palpable.
Once we had a day picked out, a wedding license, and the cooperation of our officiants, we told our parents. My parents were not okay with it at first. They didn't advise against it, but their displeasure was obvious. If you had shelled out thousands of dollars for someone's wedding, you'd be pretty upset that they chose to have a different wedding too.
Mr. Kettle's parents were more okay with it, but their general response to him is usually okay. If he thinks it's a good idea, they do too, generally. My parents weren't thrilled, but they were on board. All that was left was inviting our siblings, my grandmother, a couple of close family friends, and a musician to play the organ.
I told Mr. Kettle I wanted 12-20 people there. Including us, there ended up being exactly 20. It was very intimate and private and special. We just wore whatever and my maid of honor got us flowers on the way over for the day.
We had a simple ceremony. Vows, exchanging rings, communion, and a lot of tears. When I get around to re-capping the ceremony on Saturday, you'll see it was such a different atmosphere.
After the ceremony, everyone looked so happy. My parents were wiping away tears and so were his parents. It felt so rigth to me to be getting married with just those people. There were a lot of family and friends who weren't there that Wednesday who were there on Saturday, but I was okay.
I looked forward to Saturday after that. All I'd wanted Saturday to be was a big party and a celebration with a lot of people we care about. Now that's all it was in my head. No more 600 eye nightmares. Just looking forward to wearing a beautiful dress and eating some fantastic food.
 |
| Our first of two wedding days. |
Okay, before I start my recaps, I'll finish with the DIY projects I completed before going into my guest-list funk.
Did you chosen wedding day change for any reason?
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Getting Married Once or Twice, Part Two
Where we last left off, I was having nightmares about the size of my wedding. Sure I wanted 35 people in my wedding party, but I didn't want 10 times that many people eye balling me out in the crowd during the ceremony.
So I just stuck my head in the sand and avoided all wedding talk I could. They didn't try to talk to me about it, but everyone from my parents to my maid of honor and definitely Mr. Kettle could tell something was wrong.
About 10 days before our wedding, I asked Mr. Kettle, "Do you really want to get married next Saturday?" That question, understandably so, freaked him out. After a confusing 15 min or so, he figured out that I wasn't trying to suggest I didn't want to marry him, I just didn't want to get married on that day.
He then suggested, "why don't we get married before that day?" He knew I didn't want to call off the wedding. He knew eloping wasn't an option. He figured we could just get married a couple days before Saturday. That was on Saturday, we'd be married and I wouldn't have to feel like I was sharing such an intimate moment with all these people I didn't even know.
As soon as he said the words, I felt a million times better. I didn't even know I could feel better. I had resigned myself to feeling more anxiety and resentment than anything else. And with one short sentence, Mr. Kettle made everything better.
I knew it wasn't that simple. Our parents were probably not going to love the pre-wedding idea. We'd have to pick a day when our immediate family would even be available to come to a pre-wedding. We had two officiants, and we wanted both of them there, so that had to be worked out too.
Oh, and there's the marriage license dilemma. In Illinois, you must get your license in the county you'll get married in. Saturday was in Will County. But everyone lives in Cook County. We hadn't gotten our license yet because of timing and business, so that kind of worked out. We just went to the Markham Courthouse, which was much easier to get to, and got our license for Cook County.
Next, I'll talk about breaking the news to people, and getting married for the first time.
So I just stuck my head in the sand and avoided all wedding talk I could. They didn't try to talk to me about it, but everyone from my parents to my maid of honor and definitely Mr. Kettle could tell something was wrong.
About 10 days before our wedding, I asked Mr. Kettle, "Do you really want to get married next Saturday?" That question, understandably so, freaked him out. After a confusing 15 min or so, he figured out that I wasn't trying to suggest I didn't want to marry him, I just didn't want to get married on that day.
He then suggested, "why don't we get married before that day?" He knew I didn't want to call off the wedding. He knew eloping wasn't an option. He figured we could just get married a couple days before Saturday. That was on Saturday, we'd be married and I wouldn't have to feel like I was sharing such an intimate moment with all these people I didn't even know.
As soon as he said the words, I felt a million times better. I didn't even know I could feel better. I had resigned myself to feeling more anxiety and resentment than anything else. And with one short sentence, Mr. Kettle made everything better.
I knew it wasn't that simple. Our parents were probably not going to love the pre-wedding idea. We'd have to pick a day when our immediate family would even be available to come to a pre-wedding. We had two officiants, and we wanted both of them there, so that had to be worked out too.
Oh, and there's the marriage license dilemma. In Illinois, you must get your license in the county you'll get married in. Saturday was in Will County. But everyone lives in Cook County. We hadn't gotten our license yet because of timing and business, so that kind of worked out. We just went to the Markham Courthouse, which was much easier to get to, and got our license for Cook County.
Next, I'll talk about breaking the news to people, and getting married for the first time.
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