Our day started with a large breakfast, served by a nice but possibly too loquacious waitress who thought it was totally cool that we’d come all the way to California to get married, then loaded up and headed for the courthouse in Santa Ana.
Google directions can be a bit vague; also, I was a little less careful than I should have been and only got directions to the approximate location of the courthouse. It took us twice as long as it should have for us to get there.
However, since we’d left so far ahead of time to begin with, it was still barely 1 pm, and our appointment wasn’t until 2:30. Breakfast had been so egregiously large we couldn’t even consider lunch. We had time to do a little exploring. Presently we found ourselves in the nearest Nordstrom’s, where we whiled away the minutes until we had to get back to the courthouse.
I get turned around, so don’t take this as gospel, but I think the second-story left window is the office we got married in. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Getting married, it turns out, isn’t entirely unlike renewing your car’s registration. You write your names on a sign-in sheet; you wait; every so often someone calls one set of names, not necessarily in order; and eventually your names are called.
From then on, the process goes quickly. I remember consciously trying to commit every detail to memory. It worked, just a little. I do remember the copier supplies in boxes arrayed behind the desk, but I don’t remember what seventies hit was playing on the radio as we did our duty to the bureaucrats of Orange County.
Anyway, the lady sat down at her desk and the two of us sat across from her. I was on the left, Ron was on the right. We had printouts of our paperwork, but she didn’t need it. She confirmed the information she saw on the monitor in front of her and made a few entries. We attested that we were who we claimed to be. She asked where we were from and we told her while she printed some papers out. Then she folded the papers, put them in an envelope, and led us to a tiny chapel in a corner of the office, just large enough to hold us, an officiant, and, at most, five or six guests.
While we were waiting, we each took our rings off and handed them to the other. After a minute or two a young Latino man in dark robes came in, carrying the information the lady had printed out; he was our officiant.
We stood in front of his lectern as he read the ceremony and led us in our vows, pausing occasionally so he wouldn’t call one of us by the wrong name. Ron put my ring on my finger and I put his on his. “You may kiss each other,” said the young man, and so we did.
It took only a few minutes. After the officiant told us what we had to do to obtain a copy of the marriage license, he took a couple of pictures for us. This is the better one:
After the ceremony, we spent about half an hour walking around the courthouse grounds taking pictures. Then we drove off to a lovely resort in Dana Point (which is right down the road from Laguna Beach) for our honeymoon. More on that in the next post.
