An Official Time and Place

We went to the local register office last week, my fiance and I, walking across the park in glorious sunshine towards the meeting that finally made our impending marriage seem real. We had to meet a registrar and give notice of our intention to marry. So we, us, this thing that we want to celebrate and make permanent with a ceremony and cake, had to stand up before officialdom for the first time.
Ushered into an oppressively hot waiting room that was filled with advertisements for wedding photographers and funeral directors and a large pile of leaflets about swine flu, we prepared to take our first legal steps towards marriage. Ah, that curiously atmospheric mix of attempts to sell us stuff and give us government-endorsed advice certainly created a welcoming atmosphere.

The registrar explained that we would be interviewed separately, because it was "a kind of test." We needed to prove our identity and, I suppose, that we actually knew each other and weren't entering into some kind of marriage of convenience. My seemingly inbuilt fear of authority figures reappeared like an old friend and I was as nervous as if we were actually standing up and taking our vows there and then. Predictably I could not play it cool and halfway through the interview I thought I may have blown my chances of being granted official permission to marry by being unable to answer a question - I forgot my own phone number. Luckily I was allowed to ask my fiance for help on this one and I think the registrar did eventually give me a passing grade. I remembered who I was, when I was born, who my dad was and who I was supposed to be marrying. I signed a piece of paper to say that I wanted to get married. When I had left the little airless room containing the slightly careworn registrar, who typed labouriously and ponderously with two fingers, my beloved went in and did exactly the same thing. Our names should now be posted on the board outside the register office and the local public has two weeks to object to our being joined in wedlock. Assuming that they don't, then officially October 3rd 2009 will be our wedding day.

Up until now, the actual wedding has been an abstract concept, floating around in space. Now it has entered the realm of reality. To compound that feeling, a few days after giving notice of our marriage we received confirmation that two registrars had been booked to attend our ceremony. This came with further details of the legally binding vows that we will say and the order of proceedings on the wedding day. They were neatly printed out on an A4 sheet, resplendent in a flowery serif script and bedecked with the glorious beauty of Microsoft Word clip art. Hearts and doves abounded. This missive was clearly the work of a bored admin assistant on a quiet afternoon and I loved it all the more for that. The juxtaposition of the mundane with the momentous had a certain charm. It was as if our big day, one of the key turning points of our lives, was briefly breaking into dull, tedious, everyday life. For a few moments in October, normality for us will be suspended and we will be getting married, while for others things will be just carrying on as normal. I like that. That makes me smile.