The Marriage Certificate

Warning: Contains rants.

I just want to share my experience when I was processing our marriage certificate in the city hall. I'm not sure if this will help or anyone registering their marriage has any choice as it's the office's (inefficient) procedure but here goes:

After our civil marriage, my mother in law volunteered to register the marriage contract. Since we only had one listed witness present and the rest were proxies and they all signed at the back page of the contract, she had to get other signatures after the event. According to the CCF coordinator, there  should be at least 2 signatures at the front page.  Unknown to us, they should only use black ballpen when signing. All the signees during the ceremony used black ballpen but some other additional ones used blue.

Lesson #1: Invite witnesses indicated on  your contract especially in the front page. Since it was a "small" event and I wasn't aware that the witnesses should be the ninongs/ninangs listed, we neglected to invite the required people.

Lesson #2: Use black ballpen. My MIL submitted the contract to the CCF office.The CCF office then passed it to Las Pinas City hall but sent it back due to the ink.

I ended up submitting the contract myself since we had to submit it within 10 days after the wedding or else it will be considered as late registration. Good thing we met with our OTD coordinator within that week which made us aware of this fact. According to him, if it is registered late then an affidavit is required and processing will take 1 yr instead of the usual 6 months.

Lesson #3: Register as soon as possible. We didn't have to make a mistake to learn this one.

Exactly 10 days into our marriage, I brought the papers to city hall. I paid P100 for the solemnization fee. That's what it costs tack o have the papers stamped and signed by the civil registry. Then they told me to come back next week.

Annoyance #1: Why do you have to pay to have your marriage solemnized? Does the stamp and signature really cost that much? If that is all it takes to register, then why did it take that long for them to return the copy with blue ink? And why did they recieve the copy with blue ink in the first place instead of just returning it immediately to the CCF messenger?

The following week I came back and all they did was put a registry number. So I thought, where's the certified true copy? They said I need to pay for that and wait for another 30 minutes. Since I had another appointment, I had no choice but to come back for it.

Annoyance #2: They should have informed me that a certified copy should be requested and is not automatically given. Then I could have asked them to prepare it beforehand instead of me just going there just to have the registry number written!

Today, I went again. They charged me P50 for the certified true copy.They didn't have change so I had to go outside for smaller bills. When I received the copy, they asked for an addition P2 for the photocopy.

Annoyance #3: Apparently, the "Certified True Copy" is just a xerox copy with a Certified Xerox Copy stamp in it. Aargh, this is what they say will take 30 minutes! If I had known, I could have gotten it the last time I went. And why did they have to ask for an additional P2?  Again, does the stamp and signature really cost that much?

Annoyance #4: In my opinion, all of this could have been done in 1 day! I don't know what kind of processing is done at the back end but cmon, it can't be that hard.