I Do, but I thought for a couple of days that I Didn't

That is a long title. Could she have not realized that was the title line? Yes, I realized that was the title line, but I like long titles sometimes, ok?!?!

Anyway, the past week-ish, I've been watching for the confirmation from the Great State of Texas that I am recognized as a married woman. Every day, doorway man tells me that it's not here.

I can be kind of a pest. And after I pestered people for six months before the wedding about cakes and photos and music, and was just in general obnoxious, I've been keeping a low profile on the followup stuff.

But as I grew more anxious about the magic envelope of goodies I need to change my name, I finally decided to reach out to the minister who married us, my uncle.

I asked in the meekest way I knew how by email if there was anything I needed to do to make it legal. (READ: Did my parents beg you not to mail my marriage certificate? -Not really. He wouldn't do that. But I did want to know that it was mailed.) The response was that they gave it back to us. Aaaaaanh!!! We no got no marriage license!!!!

So this was the timeline.

Reception was winding down. We were really tired. I remembered we hadn't given the license to the minister, so we tracked it down and handed it over with the envelope. And we headed for the door where our guests were waiting to blow bubbles in our faces and shoot us with silly string. And right before we step outside, my sister hands my new husband an envelope. We take one more step into chaos and run to our car amid cheers and bell ringing and whatever to our car. We open the door of the car to possibly a hundred balloons and to shove an impossibly poofy dress into a Nissan Versa. And the mystery envelope was not seen or thought of again...

And then we went on our honeymoon, all the while thinking that someone else would be mailing the license and any day we would have confirmation that we are married.

Until yesterday.

So I panicked and turned the house upside down and shook it. No marriage license fell out of any crack. I'm thinking the whole time that I spent all this money and inconvenienced all these people, used the gifts and money people bought us, and I'm not even going to be married. The thirty days is almost up, and we haven't built up our stupid fund to pay a license fee again. We're less than a week from the deadline, and we're gonna have to get married again. Argghh!!!

The license showed up in a stack of mail!! We're mailing it tomorrow, and it will be legal and everything. Doorway man found it!

(Sidenote: Doorway man was not in trouble for losing it. I knew that I would not have done any better at keeping it at that particular moment.)