It has always been said that every woman’s dream is to be married to the man she loved and have a happy family life. And this is exactly what I have dreamt and prayed for. However, I came to a point where I thought this would not happen anymore due to certain circumstances in my life and in Filipino culture, a woman should get married in her younger years. If a lady is unmarried in her 30’s, she’s considered an old maiden already and it will be difficult to find someone. I couldn’t be thankful enough, I met mi amor and here we are – building our life together.
We got engaged one year ago (November 2023) and from then on me and mi amor planned to be married a year after, and we were so lucky that we did it. We made it after going through a lot of stress while our K1 visa is in process. Our 221G status pushed back our plan a little bit but we are finally here!
My visa application was put to administrative processing (221G) status on July 18, 2024. We received an update from the US embassy on October 23, 2024, and got my passport with visa stamp and a packet on October 31, 2024. I flew and admitted through my K1 visa in Florida at Miami airport on November 7, 2024. It was really an unimaginable feeling seeing my fiancé pick me up at the airport and we will be together for real. It will be no more sad feeling being in the airport like before where I used to drop him going back home. We immediately planned our court wedding. We have checked online what will be the process of getting married in court here in Florida and we are going to share it with you. Hopefully it will help those couple who are like us that are clueless in the initial processes.
The first thing we do is to get our marriage license to be able to be married. Based on the information we saw online we can get the license in any Clerk of Courts in Florida. Since we live in Palm Bay, we choose the ones near us and that is Brevard Clerk of Courts. This area consists of different government offices, and we thought that the office where we get our marriage license opens at 9am, the same as the others but it opens at 8am in the morning. We arrived early at the location, and we waited until it was almost 9am. When we came to the office, we found out it was already opened at 8am. We went inside, took a number and waited in a queue. When it was our turn, we came to one of the counters and the staff started processing our marriage license. We only presented our valid identification cards. My fiancé presented his driver’s license since he is a US citizen and as for me, a passport. While the clerk was processing our paper, she asked us if we had read Florida’s Family Handbook where a copy is available online. Since we have not read it, she gave us a hard copy of the handbook and let us read it. When we finished, the clerk let us sign a document that we read and understood what was written in the handbook. We paid a marriage license fee of $86.00. This fee and the license is applicable to Florida only and cannot be used in other states.
The marriage license can be used within 60 days. After securing it, we researched where we can get married and since we cannot find any information if we need to book it online, we went directly to Rachel M. Sadoff Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Brevard County and personally asked about it. We went to the customer service division where we found out that we can apply directly for a marriage license, pay the fees and get married on the same day. Because we are not ready, we have scheduled our court wedding for the latter date. We came back to the court on November 21, 2024, we get dressed and ready to be wed.
I wore a white dress while mi amor wore khaki pants and a blue long sleeves shirt. While we were on our way to the entrance, there were ladies seating outside and asking if we were going to get married that day. They were all smiling when we said yes. We entered the security and headed to the customer service office. There were not many people, and we just waited for a few minutes until our queue number we were called. We went to one of the windows and informed staff that we wanted to get married that day. We handed in our marriage license along with our identification – his driver’s license and my passport. We paid “ML Ceremony” fee of $30.00. The fee includes one free certified marriage license copy. Every additional copy cost $2.00. We have requested two more copies that we will use as one of the requirements when we filed my Adjust of Status (AOS) application.
After we finished paying, we went to the room where the marriage ceremony took place. The room is well decorated and beautiful. The same clerk is the one officiated our wedding. Witnesses are not required. We said our I dos and we’re married in just a few minutes. When we headed outside, the same ladies were looking at us with happy faces and wishes us the best of luck in our married life. I find it cute and kind. We had a mini celebration at home, and it was indeed the best feeling ever!
Our life together has just started. Life will not be perfect, but we made promise that we will get it whatever it is and whatever it takes.
