The First Miracle in Our Marriage

I mentioned in the last post I had trouble registering our marriage with the Notaría's.  Here's the long story.  Be prepared to hear about my frustrations....haha!

Before I came back to Colombia I didn't do any research on the requirements needed for marriage as I figured it would be simple.  How wrong was I.  This was discovered shortly after I returned when we started talking to the Notaría's about the process of registering a marriage.  For locals, one only needs a birth certificate and cedula (ID card).  For foreigners, one needs a certified copy of the birth certificate that is apostille (Before I didn't know what that was, but its a recognized International format for legal documents), passport copy, and proof of being unmarried.  I had copy of my birth certificate with me, but its not a certified copy and neither is it apostille.  Both of which has to be obtained in India. (The Indian embassy in Colombia can certify documents but not apostille them.)  I was a bit doubtful I could even obtain that.  I was a bit frustrated as the Notaría's are very strict on having the birth certificate.  I couldn't understand why they couldn't just accept my passport as its a legal document which shows my information.  Grrr...

So I talked to my sister Mish in N. Carolina and asked her if she had any friends in Pune India that could help with getting my birth certificate in time for a Feb. 28 wedding.  I wrote her about a month before the wedding.  She put me in touch with her good friend Mary who then put me in touch with her brother JD who had more time to work on helping me than Mary.  JD and I started communicating through WhatsApp.  He had to make an appointment with Pune Municipal Corporation as they are the birth register for me.  They gave him 3 certified copies of the certificate.  I was quite surprised and happy that the process had moved along this quickly.  It was the 9th of Feb. so there was hope we might get the certificate before the 28th.  Shortly after getting the certificates and while JD was researching how to get the apostille, he had a family emergency that called him away to another part of India.  So he turned over the paperwork to Sri who is a family friend and a lawyer.  Note during all this process, I was trying to maintain communication with them so I could help move things along.  This required me staying up after midnight because the time difference with India.  I have to say I had some tired days in there.  Sri needed a copy of my passport so I sent that to her.  Then she had to wait for a hearing on it.  She said to pray a lot, because it usually takes a while as the apostille is handled by the government.  If one is the son of a politician, then things get done quickly.

A week before the wedding, we decided to push the wedding back 2 more weeks to March 13th.  We still hadn't sent out wedding invitations although it was mostly her family.  Unfortunately 2 of Veronica's close friends had booked airfare for the 28th date and so it was frustrating that we could not have it then.  Only one of them was able to come for the wedding on the 13th.  During this waiting time Veronica explored the possibility of marrying and registering later.  The Adventist pastor she talked to said the pastors were not allowed by the conference to perform marriages unless all the legal paperwork was in order.  This really fired me off, as marriage is an institution from God and not the state.  Why did the church have to behave this way.  Veronica's aunt Julieta told us to talk to her pastor, Varon.  We went to his office and he said he would give us the paperwork to get married even though he wasn't performing the marriage.  We had asked pastor Oscar who was the chaplain at the Colegio Veronica had worked at and whom I got to know a little.

Sri reported that she would have the apostille birth certificate 10 days before the marriage.  I asked her to send one of the copies of the birth certificate so I could maybe use it to negotiate with the Notaría.  It costs about $50 to send a document by DHL from India to Colombia in 5 days.  Not cheap but I was hoping it would help having something to show the Notaría.  Pastor Varon is registered at one of them and said we could go talk to them.  Before we went there he looked at my birth certificate and said there was a problem as my name shown is my first and second name.  No last name and the parents name ends in Khan.  I explained that I was adopted.  He said the Notaría would not accept my paperwork as the name does not match my name now and I don't have paperwork to show the trail of name changes. (My adoption paperwork shows my last name as my Mom's maiden name.  She later married when I was 18 months old.)  We walked over to the Notaría and talked to the lady that handles matrimony.  She looked at my birth certificate and my passport copy and the pastor explained why the names didn't match.  She said the same thing as the pastor, that I must show evidence of name change.  Double frustration as there is no paperwork that I possess for that.  I was thinking why does Colombia have to be so complicated. :(

Anyway, we had our marriage and then signed the church marriage document.  Two weeks later we visited the pastor to attempt one more visit to the Notaría as we are married and also I had my birth certificate with the apostille on it.  The pastor still said they are going to give you trouble on your name, but lets go visit them.  So we walked across the street and visited the same woman as before.  The pastor gave her my paperwork and was explaining again about the name.  She looked at the church document that showed  we are married and said promptly, "oh you're already married."  She then proceeded to take my passport copy and Veronica's cedula copy and start the process for registration.  Wow!  I was amazed and so was the pastor.  He said he's never seen them do that before.  We all said a big thanks to God for providing this miracle as I was almost resigned to the fact we would have to register in another country or make a fake wedding certificate. haha!