Wedding Recap and Withdrawal

Officiant DISASTER (UPDATED--she was a fraud)

UPDATE: Finally (after 2 months) got New York's City Clerk to confirm what we suspected: Anoek Inbar was NOT registered to be an officiant. And when they contacted her to ask her to register, she did not respond in any way, and therefore, my marriage is not legal. The clerk told me there was no way to have my wedding "count."

This was a destination wedding, so I can't even go back and do it there. Plus, I may be pregnant already now. I'm heartbroken and devastated, but thankfully Texas has a common-law marriage provision that since we've been living as man and wife, they will give us an informal certificate of marriage backdated to our actual wedding day. It's all we can do.

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I can't tell you what a nightmare our officiant was. She seemed fine at our three meetings prior to the wedding. But on the wedding day:

1. She called me the wrong name during the ceremony--twice. I finally had to stop her and correct her.

2. People thought she was drunk or high. I'm sure she wasn't--but something was wrong. She was seriously loopy.

3. She forgot to sign the certificate--oh, and this gets better.

4. She gave us the certificate back without calling over the witnesses--sent it with my daughter. I didn't look at it until later and realized--nobody signed anything. Not her, not the groom and I. We got up the next morning and met the witnesses to sign. It clearly stated on the enveloped "OFFICIANT MUST MAIL WITHIN FIVE DAYS." I sent her an email to get her to sign it and she sent me back an email saying it was my fault because it was dark at the ceremony and I should have done it at a meeting prior to the wedding (even though I didn't have witnesses?)

5. I let her know I was calling City Hall (New York--and we don't live there, we were visiting for our wedding) to see if they could help our situation, and she got very upset and sent a long hateful email saying  "Let's just get out of each other's lives." At this point we were not legally married, no way to get the license signed, and reconciled ourselves to having a second small ceremony at City Hall.

6. The groom realized he needed to step in and called her, calmed her down, and took a subway to her to get her to sign it. Upon looking at it one last time, we realized she had written the WRONG DATE on the form. We corrected it and mailed it ourselves.

I post this story to remind you how important the legal part can be!

Re: Officiant DISASTER (UPDATED--she was a fraud)

  • WOW! This would be a great post to put on your local board as well. You should also mention the officiant so noone makes the same mistake. 
  • WOW. 
    I would be posting on your local board, yelp, everything. 
    Seriously.. This woman is a train wreck and should NOT be allowed to handle weddings. 
    I am SOOOO sorry for your awful situation!!
    The important thing from all of this is that you know that you and your husband can work as a team to fix horrible situations, so yay for you two there! 
    But jeeses.. Who  know what is going on in this person's life right now and maybe that's the problem.. but If you can't separate work and personal, you shouldn't be at that work. 
    How miserable for you two :( 
  • I posted in the local board and said her name there. She's also on my profile here as not recommended.

    The hardest thing is that she is a friend of a good friend of mine. That's how we found her.

    I also worry that something is going on with her. And I would have been sympathetic to this if she had not attacked me and said I was overreacting--hello, my marriage isn't LEGAL! We were only in NY a few days and spent much of our honeymoon dealing with this.

    Sigh. It's over. But I am making sure people who Google her name will find out what happened to us.
  • Wow, that is awful! Good thing you guys got it all sorted out.
  • Omg I am so sorry that happened to you!!
  • Still waiting on our marriage license to arrive--I'm PRAYING it's all in order!
  • This is absaolutely horribel - i'm so sorry you ahd this unneeded and ridiculous stress! This woman should be banned from all weddings!  You had me at forgetting your name (twice!), but everything else, my lord! Way to get through it together, and congratulations on getting married (finally). All good thoughts your way.
    What a beautiful mess this is...
  • This is absaolutely horribel - i'm so sorry you ahd this unneeded and ridiculous stress! This woman should be banned from all weddings!  You had me at forgetting your name (twice!), but everything else, my lord! Way to get through it together, and congratulations on getting married (finally). All good thoughts your way.
    What a beautiful mess this is...
  • CalliDolliCalliDolli member
    First Comment
    edited July 2012

    Hi there, I work at NBC Chicago and we're looking for people with wedding disasters/want or need to make apologies for spoiled weddings/special events.  We'd love to talk to you!  

    If you would like to be considered for this nationally syndicated daytime television show, taping in the Chicago area, please email us at daytime6@deepdish.tv

     

     

  • UPDATE: Finally (after 2 months) got New York's City Clerk to confirm what we suspected: Anoek Inbar was NOT registered to be an officiant. And when they contacted her to ask her to register, she did not respond in any way, and therefore, my marriage is not legal. The clerk told me there was no way to have my wedding "count."

    This was a destination wedding, so I can't even go back and do it there. Plus, I may be pregnant already now. I'm heartbroken and devastated, but thankfully Texas has a common-law marriage provision that since we've been living as man and wife, they will give us an informal certificate of marriage backdated to our actual wedding day. It's all we can do.
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