Making It Legal

We had a nice Middletown Springs day today.  Got up, walked the cats out in the yard, did a little e-mail, walked over to the post office, had lunch at Sissy's (she's catering the reception, and gave me a little container of a kind of Mediterranean cauliflower-couscous cold salad that she might make for us—darn good, as was lunch).  We then wandered over to the Library's book sale, back home to dig up the garden plot and get in some flowers, put together some dinner.

In the middle of that, we stopped in at the Middletown Springs Town Clerk's Office, and talked with the Town Clerk herself, Laura Castle.  We got some hints about houses and properties on the market, got to look at some 1807 property records (the handwriting is gorgeous, but you can't really read it... that really WAS a long time ago, and letters are just shaped a little different now than they used to be), and filled out an application for a marriage license.

There area couple of ways in which the new license application forms reflect modern changes.  First off, each of the participants can check off Bride, Groom, or Spouse.  Yay for Vermont! (and Massachusetts as well.)  Second, where they ask for your address and phone number, they also ask for your e-mail address.  But aside from those nods to contemporary life, it's a pretty old school document.  Place of birth.  Father's name and place of birth.  Mother's maiden name and place of birth.

No blood test any more.  I never really did understand that.  Turns out that it wasn't a requirement until the 1930s (starting with Connecticut in 1935), to make sure that you weren't likely to pass on congenital gonorrhea or syphilis to any possible newborns.  A few states also used to test for Rh factor, again to protect potential babies.  Only three states still require it: Montana, Mississippi, and New York, along with Washington D.C.  And if you get married when you're our age, ain't no babies involved anyway.

We also didn't have to show an original long-form birth certificate with the health department seal, or even a driver's license.  That's one of the nice things about going to a small town government office—everyone knows you, and you can leave a lot of paperwork at home.  Laura also knows Nelson, our officiant, so we didn't need his home address either.

Nora was talking about being a little stressed, and Laura said, "It'll be fine.  It'll be over in five minutes, and you'll wonder what all the fuss was about."  Probably many generations of women have gotten the same advice before getting married, usually pertaining to the wedding night.

Laura will type up our application and get a marriage license in about a week.  It expires in 60 days if you don't use it, so we're planning to get married in late June to make sure our certificate is still good (kind of like those coupons you get every month or so from Bed Bath and Beyond).   Come on up if you're not doing anything that weekend, and have some cauliflower salad.