We arrived at the County Clerk and Recorder around 9, signed in then sat in the waiting area. I looked around the room and noticed postings about payment types and asked the lady at the counter if they accepted debit cards or credit cards. Lo and behold - they took everything except Visa which I had four of in my wallet.
Felix and I run to an ATM a few blocks away and withdraw $100 - the license is $82. We rush back and the clerk takes us into the back to go over our marriage license. She asks for our IDs and we hand them over, I had my CA ID and Felix had his Panamanian passport. She gets up to copy them then comes back and says to Felix, "This is expired." Our hearts sank. That's everything we were afraid of. We explained to her that he was unable to get a government ID. After some painful moments she told us we could have two people with government-issued IDs come in and certify that they know who Felix is. We told her we could have people there ASAP. We ran outside and called Keegan and Erica, waking them both up. They said they'd be there right away.
Felix and I sat in the hallway for a while waiting for our friends to get there. Feeling yet again the frustration of his situation my eyes started watering. He noticed and asked me what was wrong and I started crying. An eyelash landed on my cheek and he put it on the tip of his finger and he said to me, "Make a wish, baby." If anyone were put in our place wouldn't we all wish for the same thing? I blew the eyelash and we had to go outside for a little bit so we wouldn't draw attention.
Keegan and Erica arrived and the four of us ran back inside and they made Keegan and Erica sign papers saying they can attest to Felix's identity. While they did that Felix and I settled our balance which had grown to a whopping $98 - it's $16 extra to have people confirm your identity with signatures.
When it was all done, we got up and walked out with our marriage license at last.
Now our next obstacle is how do we accommodate all the people we want to be at our wedding? We thought the room could hold more but the lady who gave us our license said 20 was the absolute maximum. She also said the Fair Oaks office could hold 27, maybe 30 tops. I just want to do the cute backyard wedding thing but since this is all such a rush I don't know how to make that happen.
