Ok, so I posted on Tuesday wondering when everyone was planning on making it legal if they need to do so for their destination, mainly because FI wanted to do it the next day (yesterday), 6 weeks before we actually get married. So we did it!! It was also FI's birthday too, so it'll be easy to remember our pseudo wedding day:)
So I don't know about everyone else that has to/have done this, but it was fairly easy for us and also provided pretty great people watching down at the St Louis County courthouse. Granted, I live in a bigger city so the people watching is probably better--or at least more varied. There was the shotgun wedding (seriously, she was about to pop), the military couple, the couple I suspect was doing it for green card, the REALLY young couple (who had a friend with them that was wearing what I suspect was a real sweater--not a sweaterdress that she was trying to make it to be--that barely covered her butt cheeks), lots of middle-aged couples, the I'm-not-sure-WTF-they're-wearing couples, etc. It really made the time go by as we waited for the judge to return from lunch.
Anyway, so at about 10:30 in the morning we went to the city offices to get the marriage license. We dressed up a little--I decided to wear my long white maxi dress I got from VS to wear for possibly my party dress after the wedding and reception and my old sandals I was going to wear for my wedding before I found the loves-of-my-life shoes I'm now going to wear on my wedding day. Despite FI not having his social security card with him (the clerk was supposed to look it up on her boss's computer, but she just had him quickly write it down like she had actually looked it up--way to go tax payer money!), we paid our $55 dollars (license, 'holy matrimony' certifcate we can take to Mexico with us to make it look like it's all legal down there, and certified copy of marriage license they'll mail out so I can take it to change my name) and then we went to eat some sushi at our fave sushi restaurant across the street. After that, we had to go the courthouse to first get in line to start filing our marriage license before the ceremony as well as to get our number for being called in for the ceremony (we got there quick and were #3). So then we had to wait around an hour until 1 before they called us in to the courtroom. Once they had all the couples getting married in the courtroom (about 30 total for the day), they then called each couple into the judge's chambers for the ceremony.
When we went in to the judge's chambers, we shook hands with the judge, he asked us to join hands (which we were already doing), and then he asked us some of the basic vows before we both said "i will." We didn't do ring exchanges or more vows as that's being saved for the 'real' wedding down in Mexico. Then he pronounced us husband and wife and we kissed! Ironically enough, we then went to do FI's final fitting for his wedding suit. We also went out to dinner at a nice restaurant later on. The waiter asked us if we were celebrating anything, and we said it was FI's birthday and we also just got married (and told him how we're doing a DW). We got some free dessert (which was really, really good) out of it!
So yeah, we are now legally married. About 5 weeks to go until we leave for Mexico for our real wedding! We aren't telling anybody, although my boss knows (I had to ask him for the day off), some people FI works with knows, and I texted my BFF/MOH right before we went in to the judge's chamber, but that's it. We're going to TRY not to tell anyone else and just be all coy if asked when we're going to make it legal (most people know we were going to take care of the legalities beforehand).
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