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| Kind of our approach... |
So, excuses have been made, forgiveness has been asked for. All I have left to do now is to start writing again again. I am going to be rigorous and dilligent, and I will do my best to remain so for more than one afternoon.
To ease you into my life again again, I have prepared a light topic, which will bring a smile to your face and will make you want to hold hands with your loved ones, paint mugs and buy cute puppies. Yes, you have guessed right from the mysterious title: I am getting married. From July on - if the paperwork gods allow it - I will be ticking the box marked "Mrs." instead of "Ms.", and I will refer to Jandro as "hubbie" / "my dear husband" on every occasion. And do not let my ironic tone mislead you - this is at least as exciting as looking for crododiles in the African swamps (will my fiance dump me for this comparison?) and I am absolutely thrilled. Married. Me. Magnifique!
Hey, but did you really believe it would be simple and pink? If you know me at all, you should know better. It is only thanks to my innate optimism that this post is not entitled "Why Galician-Polish weddings are the most complicated thing in the world". Think I'm exaggerating? Well then, read on:
Registry Office is out of office
For family reasons, we have decided to get married in Galicia. This means, we must establish contact with the registry office in Cangas, which is a small Galician town, where my boyfriend grew up and where most foreigners are from...well, Madrid. So when Jandro finally managed to get on the phone with an employee of the office - as it turned out, slightly less competent than we had expected, and much less competent than we had wished - he found out that we could not be married in Cangas, as neither of us lived there and if he felt strongly about it, he could come and speak to her in person. Oh, you can't come because you don't live in Cangas? Well then you can't get married here, anyway, silly.
After this fruitful exchange, the office stopped picking up their phone, probably in case we decided to call again. Better safe than sorry.
So do you even know your fiance?
Not at all discouraged by our first encounter with the registry office, we decided to visit the Spanish consulate here in Brussels. As it turns out, Spain is taking all precautions against foreigners marrying their citizens. Our excitement at the fact that we can indeed get married in Spain (ha ha, registry office girl, you lose!) was very quickly overshadowed by all the required paperwork in order to do so, including an interview - separate for each one of us - which is supposed to check if I'm after Jandro or maybe just Spanish nationality. I mean, with the unemployment rates and the fantastic economy and stuff, how could anyone not want to become Spanish these days?
You gotta fight for your right to paaaarty!
Yes, well, and then there's the whole Party Issue. Small weddings don't exist in Galicia (the famous "if it's going to be cheap better not do it at all" principle) and the General Guidelines for Galician Weddings are:
- lots of food, including 7 types of seafood;
- lots of people, including the uncles and aunts of your uncles and aunts;
- lots of food and,
- last but not least, lots of food.
And so, we are not yet sure where we stand on the whole "wedding reception" thing. But, unless we start moving soon enough, life might solve the problem for us: Cangas and the surrounding villages have very few places where this kind of fiesta can be held, and something tells me we might not be the only people getting married in July.
What we know...
for sure is the following:
- we love each other and want to get married;
- we want to celebrate this fact with the people we love;
- we want to keep it as simple as possible;
- no wedding dress, a regular elegant dress will do;
- no first dance, no cutting the cake together;
- we want a very cool photo session;
- we're going to get married in Spain and organise a little gathering for my family in Poland;
- the paperwork is tremendous but... back to bullet one whenever we feel overwhelmed.
In the end, it's not about how we do it or where we do it. It's about... all the terrible bureaucracy we have to deal with in order to do it!
Nah, just kidding. It's about butterflies in my stomach, of course.
Image comes from here.
