Sari all the way from India, my shirt from Chinatown

Julie Yu Kang and I did what many people do: we had a quick wedding at City Hall in San Francisco administered by a Deputy Marriage Commissioner and then we had a bigger wedding ceremony a year later after we’d planned everything. We knew we wanted to get married and have kids pretty quickly, but we still hadn’t worked out all the details of when and so on. The few big advantages to getting married earlier are that we could start working on our family right after, we could ensure I had permanent residence quickly, and get on the process of unifying our finances and taxes and all that.

I’d been dragging my feet on the process when, one day, while we were talking about it, Julie pulled up the City Hall appointment list and we found that there was an appointment the next week. Someone else’s cancellation was our good fortune! Julie’s engagement ring was still in construction, but we had her wedding ring from Tiffany’s. The process of a wedding at City Hall is quite straightforward and involves two visits to the place:

1. The first one is where you go in with your marriage license and application and say who you are
2. The next one is where you go in with your license and choose to get married in front of your witness

Timing[edit]

You’ve got to show up a little early for both of these because there’s a bit of a line to get into the room where the licenses are made; and because there’s a short bit of ceremony for the witness just before the ceremony where they sign something. Parking is quite straightforward at the Union Square parking garage, but actually getting there is hard because you have to run the gauntlet of crossing Market St. and then making it through the streets people are taking to get to Van Ness Ave. which means you’ve got quite a bit of traffic. Two of our friends actually got stuck in traffic and almost didn’t make it!

On our way there

On the plus side, if you are the first couple of the day, and you’ve showed up early enough then if you get done with your stuff they’ll let you go right up and you have the main area available for longer than most people will. The first 9 AM slot that people dropped should actually be quite coveted! There are quite a few weddings and they’re pretty packed together so I assume missing your slot can be bad.

Getting the license to marry is a bit lower stress. In our case, getting the license involved going through a side door to enter, though that was because they had some sort of event that day. But most days, it’s just another room where you go through with your stuff, hand over the forms, read over everything carefully and make sure your name isn’t misspelled and then you get a license. It’s pretty straightforward to do. I thought you had to be absolutely perfectly on time so we rushed but then ended up sitting there, because of the line.

In the end, the marriage certificate has my mum’s name spelled with an extra character. Such is life, I suppose. After all my daughter’s SSN was mailed to a Mr. “Geroge”.

Ceremony[edit]

The moment itself

The actual ceremony is run by a Deputy Marriage Commissioner, who will be dressed in robes like a judge. Ours was a blonde lady named Ms. Edelman. We had quite a bit of time in the cupola by ourselves until she came up, and we had about 10 minutes after before the next couple. She was quite a cheerful person, and while I don’t remember the precise words she said I do recall that they were quite sweet and well-chosen. Unfortunately for her process, I thought she’d finished speaking halfway through her question and quickly said my “I do!” which led to a lot of laughter all around. But it’s a pretty standard process:

1. Officiant says what’s going on and her part
2. I say I do
3. Julie says she does
4. Then we kiss

Afterwards, we have access to quite a bit of city hall and we walked around and took quite a few photographs here and there with the family and our friends. We were allowed 6 guests, though if you want more you can book it as an event and they let a bunch in. I imagine they’re not too particular about the total number, though. Things do get done at City Hall so there’ll be people walking about anyway, and once the first ceremony gets started it’s about time for when the photographers and stuff for the later ones will be present nearby. In any case, our group was the two of us and six of our friends and family.

Once you’re up there, it takes about 10 minutes for the officiant to pop up, and then the ceremony happens, and then you’ve got about 10 minutes of the place to yourself and then you have to make room for the next group of people.

Afterwards[edit]

Our friends Eunice and Esther had a pretty good idea of where to get photos in City Hall so we walked around quite a bit.

A classic spinny moment

A classic window-frame moment

We then went out and walked down to Arsicault Bakery on McAllister St. If you’re not familiar with the neighbourhood, then I should warn you that this is the edge of the Tenderloin and it’s full of Tenderloin stuff. For us, it was only a block from where Julie (and sometimes I) lived before we moved in together with our friends Karen and Shreyas, so we expected all the action. And action we got. Just as we reached Arsicault, a police car pulled up with a couple of officers, one of whom looked straight from a cop movie. He actually got out and flashed the “rubbing thumb and index finger” gesture that everyone in the world expects for “money” and then got in a conversation with the guy there who looked like he was selling drugs. From inside Arsicault, I saw that he then arrested the chap so either he was joking or the guy didn’t pay up. Quite an entertaining cap on that part of the day.

Our friends then had to go back to work and Julie and I went home now husband and wife.