On the winding road to my Paris wedding

So the good news is, all went well with my appointments at the Paris town hall and the US Embassy. That is, everything BUT that the town hall refused to give us a wedding date! Long story short, our town hall has a stipulation that once a dossier is submitted, there is an additional step before you are fully approved.

It is an antiquated process that is just plain silly. Basically, they must publish an announcement that is visible to the public for two weeks stating our plans to be married. It is called “La publication des bans.” I guess it comes from the idea of allowing community members the chance to object in the case that there is knowledge that either individual has been married before.

Maybe in the past this process had more impact, but today the names of spouses-to-be are posted on a pin board in the lobby of the town hall. I can’t imagine anyone objects to any nuptials these days. Regardless, the procedure is held important to the process. In other town halls in France, you don’t have to wait for these “bans” to be published to get your date right away. And we were under the false impression that we could set our date that very day. So you can imagine our disappointment.

After impatiently waiting the two weeks we learned there was a filing error and we’d have to wait until it got corrected. Ultimately, it all ended up taking over six weeks to resolve. And now we FINALLY have our date!!

Since we got it, we have been in serious planning mode! Venue, flowers, make-up, hair, catering, table decor, invitations, translator for the ceremony, etc. My fiancee and I are SO lucky because we have two dear best friends who are based in Paris who are helping us each step of the way. One happens to be a wedding planner and the other happens to be an event planner. Together they are our dream team!

At the top of this post is a picture of me standing excitedly after our first appointment in front of the town hall where I’ll be married later this year! Slowly but surely it’s really happening! And I’m pinching myself!!

In case you missed it, here is my first post about the wedding process on Travel with Kate. Also, as you can imagine, I’ve been doing lots of research about restaurants and event spaces in Paris for weddings. And I put my most exotic findings in a recent article for Expedia Viewfinder entitled: Extravagant Venues for a Paris Wedding.