only half the problem is my lack of a clue

see, we’re getting married in france, cause that’s where we live and all. this simple fact makes things a WHOLE lot more complicated (at least from my perspective, and i’m the one writing this, ok? if frogboy wants to put his word in, he’s gonna have to get his own blog, and then it’d be in french anyway, and you might not speak french, and so you’d believe me anyway, and i’m really getting off the point here) in a few ways.

1. in france you MUST have a civil ceremony before any other ceremony. this is done at city hall by the mayor or one of his assistants. it typically lasts 10 to 15 minutes. our city hall’s entrance smells like pee, since it’s on the main square, where the students and other distasteful sort like to congregate after the bars close. at least i’m assuming that’s why it smells like pee. i haven’t yet seen the inside of the hall where the weddings are here, but from what i gather, it’s a pretty dry little ceremony, with lots of talk of contracts and the like. people who aren’t happy with just this can have a religious ceremony, but it has to be after the civil one.

you could, i suppose, try to organize a non-religious type of second ceremony, but: who would be the celebrant? yeah, i think in paris people are getting into this kinda deal, but it hasn’t hit us country folk yet. i couldn’t even find a protestant church that wasn’t (a) mormon, (b) jehovah’s witnesses, or (c) evangelical. that is no slam on those three, i’m just trying to say that i found no (what i’d call) mainstream protestants. none. and i searched, lemme tell you.

so, catholic it is!