Marriage License?

I thought someone had either died or been in a bad accident. Marie stared at her smartphone nearly speechless and looking shocked. She finally read the message:

“Don’t forget to bring your marriage license tomorrow! I can’t perform the wedding without it.”

It was from our priest, and it was 2:30pm. The wedding is at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday, April 14).

We could not believe it. We stood in place just blown away.

Now maybe going to the local courthouse and applying for and receiving a marriage license before one is allowed to have a church wedding is standard protocol throughout the nation - I don’t know - but it is apparently the law up here in Alaska and Marie and I didn’t know it. I had assumed that with the so-called separation of church and state in the U.S. that we could have the sacramental marriage performed and then later bebop over to the courthouse to have it legalized by the state, but I was clearly wrong. Maybe I should have done my homework better, but the fact is nobody told us we had to be okayed by the civil authorities prior to walking down the isle.

I immediately called our priest and calmly told him that we did not know we had to have the license prior to the wedding. He told us to go to the State of Alaska website and download the appropriate form, then go to the county clerk in Fairbanks and talk to them. We did this, wondering just what we would accomplish since it clearly stated in the information we downloaded that it took three business days after submitting our application for the license to be approved. Less than an hour after we received the bad news we had driven the 20 plus miles and were in front of a clerk.

We told her our story and she gave us a form to explain why we should get a waver from the 3-day wait. After I filled it out she went into a back room for several minutes while she presented the form to her supervisor. She granted the waver. Within 25 minutes and $60 later all the necessary forms were completed and we walked out of there with the marriage license in addition to the other paperwork we will need to file after the wedding.

Marie and I breathed a big sigh of relief... and thanked God for answering our prayers. What a thing to be hit with last minute! After our initial chat, our priest immediately called the bishop and told him the situation. The bishop apparently told him to work with us and the state in making sure the marriage went ahead as scheduled.

I love my bishop.

However, I have a few words I’d like to say to my priest: marriage checklist. Future engaged couples will thank you for it.