Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Inquiring Minds blah, blah, blah

Here's the scoop.

Neal and I got hitched in Oklahoma City on December 30, 1976.  True. Story.

To wit:

The two in white are us.  Really.

I know, right?  Neal has hair, and I have chubby cheeks.  But that's us!

The rings don't look familiar, because mine was stolen from All American Fitness in downtown Tulsa just ten short years after the wedding.  Neal's was stolen when someone broke into our house in 2002.  I'm not even kidding.

This was when my veil caught on fire.  Seriously.

Congratulations all around.

Or....
...these two may have been plotting the disappearance of the Marriage Certificate.  Father knows best.

Fast forward to the year 2000.  Neal's parents decided to give all the kids copies of their legal documents...birth certificates, marriage certificate, etc.  That got me thinking.  I didn't remember ever SEEING our marriage certificate.  So the search began.  Since we had just recently moved from Tulsa to Baton Rouge, you would think I would've ran across it while packing.  I literally, okay not literally, but I tore the house apart looking for it.  The only thing left to do was call the Oklahoma County Court Clerk and get another copy, right?  Not so fast.  Oklahoma County had no record of the marriage.  Say what?

Must be Tulsa County.  After all, Neal was living in Tulsa when we got married and that's where we might have gotten our blood tests.  Nope.  Tulsa County didn't have it either.

As I recall, Neal was on a business trip when all this went down, so when he got home, I gently told him I had some bad news.  "There is no record of our marriage."  And he replied that he also had some bad news.  "You need to pack your bags."  Hardy har har. That was so funny I forgot to laugh. 

Being the resourceful person I am, I wasted no time calling my attorney to see if this might be a problem somewhere down the road.  He suggested I get a signed and notarized affidavit from the minister that performed the ceremony.  Just to be on the safe side.  Which I wasted no time doing.

Now, 14 years later, for some reason I start panicking about it again.  (I look for things to worry about.)  So I wrote a letter to the Oklahoma County Court Clerk asking for a search for this document.  

Which I received in the mail Saturday.

The end.