Wedding Paperwork Hell

This is of the upmost importance and also the most annoying!  If you are getting married in the Greek Church there are various pieces of paperwork you need to have translated and get an apostil from the embassy. 

Now, I was lucky enough to have most of mine already done as I was in the process of applying for my Greek passport but Jubbs did not have such an advantage.  On top of that we actually had to get hold of his baptism certificate from South Africa.  Jubbs had always been under the illusion that he was Church of England so it came as quite a shock for him to find out, at the ripe age of 31 that he was in fact a Roman Catholic.  I obviously found it really amusing.  There are many discerning factors in his life that lead to this misunderstanding, which I am not going to go into, but there it was, the bombshell.  It makes life a little difficult when you have to go to your priest and get a letter of freedom to marry.   To add to the troubles, the priest that had baptized Jubbs had tragically died the year before and as it turns out, it is very difficult to find a Catholic priest who is willing to write a letter for someone who is not in their parish.  It was all turning into a nightmare.  We couldn’t exactly go to the Greek Priest and explain the whole situation, as he would not be hugely impressed by it all.  We tried everything.  Jubbs went to our local Catholic Priest who would only vouch that he had not been married in the 2 years we had lived in the area, which was rejected by our priest.  We tried a family friends priest who also told us he could be of no help.  As you can imagine the stress levels were getting higher, it was only a month until the wedding and we had to get it translated and to the embassy.  Then the light at the end of the tunnel!  Our priest agreed to accept a sworn declaration, which was to be made at the embassy by Jubbs swearing he had never been married. Perfect!  Not only could it all be done in house but meant we did not have to get it translated and it had the apostil done on the spot.  I think we managed to get it to the priest with 2 weeks to spare.  Poor Jubbs had spent a month running to Oxford, Tooting, Holland Park and everywhere else we desperately tried and to be honest, stress management is not his forte.  That will teach us to leave it right up to the wire.

Now not all priests will accept this, we just got very lucky.  Although the paperwork once adorned with an apostil is only valid for 3 months, make sure you get it done with bags of time to spare and check you have all the paperwork together and ready to go well in advance of the 3 month period.  Nasty surprises cause more stress than they are worth.

NY