So, what did you wear, Nancy? I also married at a City Hall and I’ll tell the story, as it is a good one; although I won’t tell it as eloquently as Nancy tells hers. My husband and I were both in the Navy and stationed in Sicily when we decided to get married. Our original thought was to go to the base chapel and get married by a chaplain, which we could have done if we were stationed on a US Navy base. But we soon found out that the rules are different on a NATO base, which is where we were. Personnel on a NATO base are bound by the rules of a host country and in Sicily at that time you could only have a legal church wedding if you were Catholic; everyone else had to have a civil ceremony at their local magistrate’s office. I am an atheist and my husband is a Lutheran. So we decided to do the magistrate’s office. How hard could it be, right? Turns out it was a real goat rope.
We filled out all the paperwork, which was a hassle as we had to go to the US embassy in Palermo in my very cool-looking, but extremely unreliable Lancia Fulvia. Thanks to my pretty piece of shit, what should have been a 6 hour round trip took us 12 hours. My husband can usually be counted on not to own a vehicle that was purchased for its looks alone - I am the only thing he’s ever acquired without extensive due diligence - but at the time he only had a motorcycle. Anyway, we finally got the initial paperwork and moved on to scheduling the ceremony. Our local magistrate did weddings on Fridays and Saturdays, so we scheduled for a Friday, planned a little party for close friends in my apartment afterwards and a short honeymoon to Rome the day after. The only thing left to do was have our paperwork stamped, which had to be done in the magistrate’s office no more than 48 hours before the ceremony.
We showed up at the office the day before the ceremony, paperwork in hand, only to discover that the person with the needed stamp was out sick. The stamp was locked in his desk and he had the only key. We would not be able to get married that weekend. OK. We rescheduled the ceremony and party to the following Friday and went, unmarried and with my maid of honor (who was stationed in England and had taken a week’s leave to be at my wedding) in tow on our honeymoon. We would be back late on Thursday, so our best man was tasked with getting the damned paperwork stamped. Unfortunately, during the few days we were in Rome, our local magistrate changed their rules and now did weddings only on Saturdays... My maid of honor had to return to London on Saturday afternoon, so we decided to go ahead and have the party as planned on Friday and get married on Saturday morning.
The party devolved into a bit of a debauch, as so many parties with sailors do, so while we did make it to the ceremony on time, I (pregnant) was the only member of the wedding party who wasn’t severely hungover. There was a bilingual man who hung out in an espresso bar across the street from the magistrate’s office and was known to be willing to translate business for American sailors in exchange for a carton of American cigarettes. We grabbed him on our way in for the ceremony. In the few pictures we have, he and I look bright-eyed and fresh, but my husband, our maid of honor and our best man look like a matched trio of zombies. I wore a maternity dress and my husband wore his uniform, minus his hat, which he forgot.
Despite the uninspiring start, the marriage itself stuck. In February we will celebrate our 37th anniversary.
So, what did you wear, Nancy? I also married at a City Hall and I’ll tell the story, as it is a good one; although I won’t tell it as eloquently as Nancy tells hers. My husband and I were both in the Navy and stationed in Sicily when we decided to get married. Our original thought was to go to the base chapel and get married by a chaplain, which we could have done if we were stationed on a US Navy base. But we soon found out that the rules are different on a NATO base, which is where we were. Personnel on a NATO base are bound by the rules of a host country and in Sicily at that time you could only have a legal church wedding if you were Catholic; everyone else had to have a civil ceremony at their local magistrate’s office. I am an atheist and my husband is a Lutheran. So we decided to do the magistrate’s office. How hard could it be, right? Turns out it was a real goat rope.
We filled out all the paperwork, which was a hassle as we had to go to the US embassy in Palermo in my very cool-looking, but extremely unreliable Lancia Fulvia. Thanks to my pretty piece of shit, what should have been a 6 hour round trip took us 12 hours. My husband can usually be counted on not to own a vehicle that was purchased for its looks alone - I am the only thing he’s ever acquired without extensive due diligence - but at the time he only had a motorcycle. Anyway, we finally got the initial paperwork and moved on to scheduling the ceremony. Our local magistrate did weddings on Fridays and Saturdays, so we scheduled for a Friday, planned a little party for close friends in my apartment afterwards and a short honeymoon to Rome the day after. The only thing left to do was have our paperwork stamped, which had to be done in the magistrate’s office no more than 48 hours before the ceremony.
We showed up at the office the day before the ceremony, paperwork in hand, only to discover that the person with the needed stamp was out sick. The stamp was locked in his desk and he had the only key. We would not be able to get married that weekend. OK. We rescheduled the ceremony and party to the following Friday and went, unmarried and with my maid of honor (who was stationed in England and had taken a week’s leave to be at my wedding) in tow on our honeymoon. We would be back late on Thursday, so our best man was tasked with getting the damned paperwork stamped. Unfortunately, during the few days we were in Rome, our local magistrate changed their rules and now did weddings only on Saturdays... My maid of honor had to return to London on Saturday afternoon, so we decided to go ahead and have the party as planned on Friday and get married on Saturday morning.
The party devolved into a bit of a debauch, as so many parties with sailors do, so while we did make it to the ceremony on time, I (pregnant) was the only member of the wedding party who wasn’t severely hungover. There was a bilingual man who hung out in an espresso bar across the street from the magistrate’s office and was known to be willing to translate business for American sailors in exchange for a carton of American cigarettes. We grabbed him on our way in for the ceremony. In the few pictures we have, he and I look bright-eyed and fresh, but my husband, our maid of honor and our best man look like a matched trio of zombies. I wore a maternity dress and my husband wore his uniform, minus his hat, which he forgot.
Despite the uninspiring start, the marriage itself stuck. In February we will celebrate our 37th anniversary.
Is Din short for something?