It's official! Well, almost.

Today Eric and I took a very big, very important step.

(drumroll......)

We went to city hall to apply for a marriage license!

It was far more straightforward than I thought it would be. I had always imagined the process of acquiring a marriage license to be a sort of labyrinth, dotted with nasty blood tests, letters of reference, and the digging up of birth certificates or possibly long-dead relatives if necessary to prove one wasn't related to one's betrothed. However, this was surprisingly painless, and not just because of the lack of blood or exhumed relatives. We didn't need to provide physical proof of anything besides our two selves. Everything else was written onto a form and sworn by oath to be true. Though the forms were a tad tricky. There was a bit of a scuffle over who got to be Party A and who got to be Party B.

A very nice clerk named Wendy talked us through the whole set of instructions. While we plodded our way through the forms, a woman came in to license her dogs, something one does think of as a straightforward procedure. How many dogs, this much per dog, here's your tags, thank you and see you in a year. Not this lady. As the story unfolded, we gathered that she hadn't been too responsible about keeping up with the whole dog licensing thing. Wendy's colleague informed her that her dogs hadn't been licensed since March of 2012. Furthermore, it sounded like the only reason she'd come clean about it was because her dogs had caused trouble, one of the neighbors complained and the police got involved and told her she'd better get those dogs licensed. The total, including licenses, backpayments and penalties, came to $180. Needless to say, the woman was none to happy about it, but reluctantly paid as she really didn't have a choice.

By this time we had completed the forms after a few embarrassing missteps (I couldn't remember Eric's birthday, he couldn't remember mine or his mom's middle name. Sometimes your mind just goes blank). We brought the forms over to Wendy, who double checked them, made us swear (but not in anger), then presented us with the equivalent of a dry cleaning ticket. We get to pick up the license on Friday! She was even nice enough to take a photo of us with the claim ticket to commemorate the event. One small step for man, one giant leap for marriage!

Moral of the story: A human license is easy; It's the dog's license you've got to worry about.