It took me several hours to figure out how to obtain 3 copies each of our birth certificates and marriage certificate. Boy, was that complicated!!! The good news is that Kevin was born in Orange County and I was born in Los Angeles County so I'll be able to go there and pick up our birth certificates in person. This is a relief because they've changed the rules for obtaining birth certs. Because you can use your birth cert as proof of nationality, they've cracked down on who can request and get one. So if you need to get one by mail, you have to have a notarized form saying that you are qualified to obtain the certificate in question (i.e. yourself or your spouse). That of course costs an extra 10 bucks. However, the best I can tell (both county websites made this very vague, but I'm pretty sure about it) you don't need the notarized form if you show up in person and prove your identity there.
Our marriage certificate was issued in Santa Clara County (up in San Jose--a 6 hour drive for those of you not familiar with the geography of California). Luckily we don't need a notarized statement for that (I wonder what kind of illegal activity one would get up to with someone else's marriage certificate). The unfortunate part is that since we have to request it by mail, it's going to take about 3 weeks to get back to us.
These certificates are immediately important because we need them to file the beginning of a certain piece of US government paperwork (the I-600A form, if anyone's really interested). This piece of paperwork takes the longest to process, so the earlier you open your file the better. So, off to the Post Office!
Posted by Shelby at July 28, 2006 02:39 PM