Marriage License Received

By Victoria

Today we went over to the Fairfax County Courthouse and got our marriage license! This is only part 1 of being officially recognized as a married couple...next is finding an officiant/celebrant who will fill out the bottom half of the form (the marriage certificate) and mail it back to the courthouse for final processing.

The process of getting the license was actually very simple. Fairfax County has a pre-application option online that allows you to fill out the paperwork before even going to the courthouse, which saves everyone some time. For both spouses, this paperwork is just basic information like your full name, level of education, parents' full names, birth state (or other country), etc. It's only about a page in total. Once that's submitted, you receive an email confirmation and instructions to bring a valid photo ID and Social Security Number with you to the courthouse. (The pre-application expires in 60 days.)

We were a little worried by the fact that Colin obviously doesn't have a SSN since he isn't a U.S. citizen, so to be safe, we collected pretty much every form of ID he brought over with him -- passport, birth certificate, driver's license, old voter registration -- and the official K-1 petition approval from the NVC in case we needed supporting evidence in lieu of the SSN.

Our visit to the courthouse was probably 15-20 minutes total...no problem. We went through security and got to the office we needed, where the wait wasn't long because there weren't many people. When it was our turn, we handed over our pre-application confirmation for the woman to scan, along with my driver's license and Colin's passport. There's also a $30 fee to get a marriage license.

After that she looked at Colin and asked him if he had a Social Security Number; he said "no," to which she just nodded and kept typing things on her computer. So we didn't need any of his other ID information! It turns out she just left that field blank. She didn't even ask for my SSN either and used my VA driver's license number in its place. Oh well.

The last part was just reviewing the information we'd submitted to make sure it was accurate, then she had us raise our right hands and take an oath that we were truthful with our information and intentions...then there was an explanation of the next steps, she handed over our packet of papers, and we were off!