[The Engagement] [The Wedding] [Notary's reading] [The Vows and Breaking of the Glass]
[Eban's Speech] [Michael's Speech] [Miguel Angel's Music] [Photos]

The Engagement

Last August Mercedes and I become engaged. We contemplated quickly getting married downtown while she was here in Ottawa but decided to wait until December so we could be married in Colombia with her family. Little did we know how many complications this entailed. Beside the usual wedding planning and complications compounded by my being in Canada and Mercedes being in Colombia, we knew that we would have to do some paperwork. We both set off immediately to make inquiries. Although no visa is required to visit Colombia, a visa is required if you want to be married in Colombia. My parents and sister therefore only needed a passport and round trip ticket while I had to file papers and pay an exorbitant sum of money. This involved filling out a form, submitting three photos, a police check (I got out of this because I'd previously done it for a work visa), a letter signed and notarized by Mercedes stating that we will be married, and my passport.

That was only the half of it. While it satisfied the Colombian embassy in Ottawa for the visa, I needed papers to send to Mercedes for the notary who would marry us. A civil marriage in Colombia is considerably more complicated than a religious marriage and the fact that I was a foreigner made it even more complicated. Only two of the five notaries in Armenia would even consider marrying us. Papers they required were photocopies of my passport, Colombian identification, the marriage visa from the Colombian embassy in Ottawa, a power of attorney to Mercedes to conduct business related to our marriage, birth certificate, and a non-impediment certificate. A non-impediment certificate is a letter from the marriage registry in Ottawa stating that I have not been married in the past. To acquire this letter I had to pay a fee for every five years they searched. To insure I wouldn't have any problems I called the embassy to find out how many years I had to go back. They said ten years. Although the office told me it would take two weeks to receive the letter, it was only after I called three weeks later that there was any movement. I was informed that the letter had been processed two days earlier. When, after four weeks of waiting, I received the form, I noticed it was dated after the date of my phone call! All these forms had to be translated into Spanish (a very expensive venture), notarized by a lawyer, stamped at Foreign Affairs, and then brought to the embassy to be legalized at a further cost. Once I had finally assembled all the paperwork and paid all the fees I sent everything down to Mercedes.

Two weeks later (we were already into late November) she called to inform me that the non-impediment form had to go back another five years to my age of majority in Colombia, and that instead of the small, standard birth certificate we use here in Canada, they required the long certificate which states my parents names. There was no time to order another non-impediment form (four week wait?) so I was told to get some family members to swear an oath before a lawyer that I hadn't been married in the last 12 years. I fished out the other birth certificate (which we fortunately had on hand) and to avoid paying another $80 for translating, had a Colombian friend here in Ottawa help me do it. After several rounds of corrections, this was also notarized and I repeated the trips to the Foreign Affairs office and the embassy for legalization.

One week before the wedding there were further problems. As Mercedes has a daughter there was yet another paper she had to get done. After making inquiries since September, they decided to inform her of this only a week before the wedding. Conveniently enough, the office that processes this form closed the next day until January and couldn't do the form until then. Mercedes's only option was to go to the other notary and file the papers there, avoiding mention of this situation. This notary said her papers were in order but that they all had to be stamped by Colombian Foreign Affairs in Bogota. That night she was on a seven-hour overnight bus to Bogota (not a very safe trip in Colombia) to do the errands and returned the next evening. The paper for Camila would have to be filed in January. The result was, however, that this notary worked at his office until 6:00 p.m. and thus could not marry us at 5:00 p.m. in the park at sunset. We had to settle for a ceremony in the reception hall. We did get married in the end, it was a beautiful ceremony and everything went smoothly. But can you imagine that to be married in Canada all you need to do is to sign a form, present two pieces of identification and pay a fee? That's it!

- Eban Namer