License to Wed

Andrew picked up our marriage license from the courthouse on Friday. This was exciting for many reasons, the non-obvious being that we finally had it in our hands after a nearly two-week-long application process we had to pencil into our already tight pre-wedding and pre-honeymoon work schedules. These schedules, needless to say, are packed and the only reason I'm blogging now is because I'm procrastinating writing two articles that need to be finished today (and I'm hungover, not gonna lie.)

So anyway, our quest for a marriage license began about two weeks ago.

"Good lord," you might say. "Two weeks? We went to the courthouse, flashed our licenses and left with our certificate a few minutes later. It was easy as pie."

Not in Mississippi. I'm sure this is shocking news to you, but Mississippi, my friends, is an old-school, stubborn state and even though the little town we live in feels for the most part like it's an artsy, educated oasis, it's still undeniably Deep South, which means no alcohol sales on Sunday and required blood tests for marriage license applications. It's one of five or so locations in the U.S. to still require this, and it tests for nothing but syphilis.

Andrew could have gone to the on-campus clinic since he's technically still a grad student, but we wanted to get tested together and one of his co-workers recommended we just drop in at an on-call clinic place because she and her new husband had gone there and been in and out within 30 minutes.

Fab, we thought. Fab, fab fab.

It was not fab.

The first time we went to the clinic, on a Tuesday, the place was packed. We sat down across from a little girl and her mother, and hadn't even been called to fill out paper work when we decided to ditch. The little girl first appeared to have chicken pox (I think it was actually a rash) but I immediately began having visions of catching whatever it was and walking down the aisle a few weeks later in my strapless, short wedding dress, my skin speckled with bright red whelps. We left pretty soon after.

Friday (I think) we went back and, like the co-worker said, were in and out in 30 minutes. We had a great nurse who was able to take the blood quickly and painlessly while she talked about her own son's wedding and commented on Andrew's "garden-hose" size veins. She then had to send the blood work to the lab, so the results weren't available until that weekend. We didn't pick them up until Tuesday, because the courthouse would have been closed anyway and I work out of town on Monday.

Excited to finally have our doctor's slips.

I am still just in awe that syphilis is the only thing our state tests for, so I of course took a pic.

So Tuesday, a week after we started trying to get a license, finally rolls around and we excitedly take our non-syphilis-infected selves into the courthouse where we have a very sweet but very old woman painstakingly take our information, making us spell nearly everything and repeat nearly everything as she types it, poking one key at a time on the keyboard. Then, when she prints our application, our address wrong, so she has to reprint it. It really wasn't that big of a deal, but at that point we were ready to get out of there and head to lunch and we were just ready to get the application in already. As we were leaving, Andrew accidentally almost stole the woman's pen but she wasn't having it and made him give it back. I don't know why I felt the need to include that.

According to the courthouse sign, there is a triathalon going on in town the morning of our wedding.

The receipt for our application fee!

So finally, Friday, the waiting period was over and we were able to get our official marriage license! I love it. Do we get to keep it or does it go on file? And are we officially married when it gets filed on the Monday after the wedding? So many questions.

So official-looking.

In other news, I blatantly blew (I had only messed up a few times before and Andrew knew of just one instance) our no bread, pasta, beer, rice diet by eating greasy lo mein Chinese takeout to combat the aforementioned hangover. It was pretty much the best thing I've ever eaten, period. But with the wedding so soon, I'm going to try to stick to salads and grilled chicken and live off of the memory of those slimy, oh-so-delicious noodles.

Wow, in the time it took to post this, I could have had one of my articles written. Instead I'm in bed next to an empty noodle container while Sawyer rolls around on the floor chewing on what I thought was a running shoe but is actually my phone charger. That's my cue to sign off.