Legalising Us

June 28, 2007 |

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As the ones that have been reading our wedding story knows, things happened a bit fast. What we had was the village wedding. Next step is to legalize our marriage, and also have it recognized by the Kingdom of Norway.

Bureaucracy is a nightmare in any nation I think. And when you are dealing with such a backward, xenophobic, self centered little nation as Norway, you have to do it the way the high an mighty want it it.

Our problem was that we did not have time to do this while I was in Thailand. So now we are gathering the paperwork together so that I can ship it off to have things scrutinized, misplaced, lost, found again, sent to the wrong address, re-scrutinized and lost again, until finally it can stamped and sent to my parents, so they can send it to me. Undoubtedly only to be lost in the mail.

The document I need goes under the long winded name: “Certificate of Non-Impediment to Marriage”. To come into possession of this a small rain-forest have to be cut down to make the paper necessary for all the documents required to have it issued.

First there is 3 separate forms to be filled out and signed.

- “Declaration by the Bride and Groom prior to Getting Married”. Each of us must fill in this form, stating that we wish to get married, how many children we may have, if we have been married before, and is the bride/ groom aware of this, and if we happen to have any sexually transmitted diseases, is the bride/ groom aware of the fact, and finally if we are aware of the right to divorce according to Norwegian Law.

- “Statement by the Sponsor” - Each of us must find someone willing to sign one example each of this document stating that we are not currently married to someone else, and that we are not closely related as far as these people know.

Since Nan is a widow, we also have to send in a copy of the certificate of death for her late husband. This of course needs to be translated into a language that the bureaucrats in the land of the midnight sun, trolls and whaling can read. So here is our stumbling block.

Nan is in the village, and there is nobody there, as far as she is aware, that can take on such a job. So she has mailed everything to me. I will scan everything, and sent it to some translation agency who can do the translation. Then hopefully the esteemed staff of the Royal Thai Embassy here in La-La land, will put some kind of stamp on them, to prove that the translation is indeed of this document, and not the manual for her cell phone.

Then there is a copy of her pass port, ID card and household registration. Plus a copy of my certificate of birth (yes, I was indeed born, anyone can ask my mother, and she will most certainly vouch for the fact that I did not just materialize out of nothing), and probably some other papers that they will not tell me about until they have lost and found the papers I have already sent in.

I will also have to prove that I have an income, by sending in a copy of my tax record, and pay slips for the last 3 months.

Then they will hopefully issue the document I need. With this in hand we can go to the Embassy in Bangkok, to fill in the marriage application and sign it. This then need to be translated into English, and we can then go to some ministry in Bangkok to have it legalized.

After all of that, we can go to the Amphur and sign the books there, and get our marriage certificate. But it’s not over with that. We still have to register the marriage in Norway. So we have to send the whole stack of papers we have obtained back to Norway, to have it registered there as well.

Now that is just to get married. I’ll probably sit here and write about getting here a visa, where all of the above have to be produced once more, but that’s another story.

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