Beyond Me: Part 2: Getting Married

In honor of Romany and my first wedding anniversary on 8 January, I've decided to create a three part blog with our story from engagement to wedding. I know it's long...I love words, what can I say? I hope it's worth reading but otherwise, it was a nice exercise and nice way for me to memorialize the memories.

THE BIG DAY had arrived. I didn't know what to expect but the butterflies were well on the move in my stomach.

To get to THE BIG DAY, I need to back up about five weeks to the beginning of December. Romany and I were leaving the country we met in and heading to Egypt. It was nice and sunny the day that we jumped into the car and headed three hours south to the capital to catch our flight. We were traveling with our bags for a month and our honeymoon in Malaysia and my wedding dress which I found at a friend's shop and bought the week before we left.

Kids working in a field outside of Romany's village.

Romany and me with his cousin (middle) and his son and
Romany's brother (right) outside of the village.

We arrived in Egypt as demonstrations broke out surrounding Morsi's bid to give himself full powers. Instead of staying in Cairo, we headed straight down to the village to start preparing for the wedding and to meet up with Romany's family. Little did I realize that things would move slower than my American trained brain could ever expect! I thought we would start on things for the wedding immediately...decorations, church, etc. Instead, I found myself in the village and village life doesn't move so fast!

We were welcomed into the family, that includes the large extended family, and spent a lot of time just figuring some things out. According to culture, Romany's family gave us the third floor apartment in their house. The first week in the village was spent working on the apartment, ordering some handmade wood furniture, and getting things worked out with the church and pastor. Things seemed to move a little slowly for me, but, as things go, I learned to “go with the flow.”

Almost a week and a half into December we headed back up to Cairo to officially get married. Since we are a foreign/Egyptian couple, we couldn't get married straight through the church like Egyptians do. Instead, we needed to officially get married through the Ministry of Justice. What an adventure we had doing that! If you've ever been in the Middle East, you'll understand! For every piece of paperwork, three or four stamps and/or signatures are required to make it official!

Sunday, 10 December

We spent a day getting my paperwork from the US Embassy and then getting it stamped at the appropriate office.

Monday, 11 December

We then moved on to getting Romany's paperwork from the church which took a day and a half. We traveled all over Cairo getting stamps and papers done so that he could prove that he's never been married before.

Tuesday, 12 December

We finished Romany's paperwork and headed to a government hospital to get blood tests. Unfortunately, we traveled all over Cairo to four different hospitals and none of them had the official certificate that we needed to complete the blood test! We were tired when we finally arrived at the fifth hospital that could do it for us.

We then had a choice to make...head over to the Ministry of Justice just before they closed or wait until the next day...We decided to chance the office being closed and hurriedly headed over to the Ministry of Justice with our two witnesses. At the Ministry, we had more paperwork to fill out and finally I got the chance to say, “I will marry him.” According to culture, Romany was never asked only the woman is asked. I think this is because it's understood that if he's there, he agrees to marry. WE WERE OFFICIALLY MARRIED!

Ah, the process wasn't finished yet! We may have said yes and had the official marriage license in hand...but we still didn't have all of the stamps, etc. We headed over to another office for three more official stamps and to get it translated.

The visa office is right off of Tahrir Square. This is the camp
that had been set up. We happened to do our paperwork
between two major times of demonstrations: when Morsi
gave himself full power and when he came out with a new
constitution without popular approval.

Wednesday, 13 December

It required two days for the translation so we used Wednesday to go to the visa office so that I could get a long-term residency visa. We spent all morning at the office until we were told that we needed to go down to the city near Romany's village.

Thursday, 14 December

I got of a bit of an education this day. I learned that even though they may give you a translation, you get to find a place to type and print it before taking it back to get officially stamped. So, we picked up the handwritten translation and headed to an internet cafe so I could type it and we could get it printed. When that was finished, we got those copies officially stamped and headed to our final office to get everything stamped. Finally, it was finished! Now we just had a church wedding to prepare!

Romany's oldest brother, wife, and two
daughters in the village.

We didn't waste any time, but instead headed down to the village to finish preparing for the wedding. We had nine days before we needed to head back to Cairo for Christmas then my parents would arrive a few days afterward. With the help of some cousins, we worked hard to get the invitations bought and ordered along with my bouquet, we had a final meeting with the pastor, ordered the hotel for the reception along with food and DJ and cake, along with other bits and pieces. All we really needed was Romany's suit which we decided to get in Cairo.

Honestly, I don't know how we got things done, but being that things are so laid back in Egypt, things just sort of happened. Though I had some things in mind, my primary goal was to get married and have fun so I tried not to stress about the small things.

I learned a couple of things over the course of the whole process: I learned that there were so many things that I assumed were needed for a good wedding, but in reality, they're not necessary. We had a great wedding full of fun without stressing over the flowers and church decorations and who would sit where at the reception. A wedding is about celebrating two lives being joined into one and I'm glad that that was a focus of ours! I also learned that the whole experience was filled with trust. Cross-culturally, I didn't always know what should or could happen and I had to lean on Romany to guide me or to calm my “American” expectations when they became unreasonable. Lastly, we learned a great deal about each other and how we deal with stress, culture, and how we can communicate. The whole experience was worth the lessons learned and the fun we had!

We were tired by the time Christmas rolled around. We had three days to recover from a very busy three weeks before my parents arrived. One day was spent with friends, we spent Christmas together and went to Chilis for a date, then we took a real day of rest.

The party got started again when my parents arrived a few days after Christmas. We started out with the sightseeing since we only had nine days before we needed to head to the village for the final few days before the wedding.