the eve of the final paperwork

Wow, so much nothing since my last posting!

  The biggest snag over the past few months was an innocent looking little entry on the wedding application form.  "Que eligen para la celebración del matrimonio el Registro Civil o Ayuntamiento ___________."  This asks us to name the town hall or Civil Registration office where we will get married.  Sounded innocent enough at first reading.   This entry on the application is just as cast-in-stone as anything else on the application, and changing our selection will be virtually impossible without, it seems, reapplication.
So we hemmed and hawed about where to do it.  Should we do it in the village of David´s father?  Should we do it in Madrid?  There was virtually no information readily available to facilitate an educated choice.  We even went to the village for the weekend, but it was a festival weekend, so the ayuntamiento was closed.  David hoped that we would see the person in charge of such administrative processes at a local bar.  No such luck.

We considered doing it in Madrid.  The news told a story about how the civil administration here in Madrid had cut the amount of time allocated to dealing with civil weddings in half.  They will now only perform weddings in the mornings.  Apparently they have the wedding guy doing something else in the afternoon.  Maybe funerals or death certifications.  I assume that department is in need of assistance.  It is clearly easier to die in Madrid than it is to get married. 
We trekked down to the local town hall.  They only do wedding one morning a month and current requests are being satisfied in seven months´s time.  Ok, the village was my first choice anyway.  David called and finally found someone who told him something he wanted to hear.  Once we have the proper authorization to wed we can call them and make an appointment.  In a village of only a few hundred people there is little or no wait, and it sounds like they can do it at any time without an allocated day or morning of the month to consider.  David didn´t mention that we are two men.  Smart move.
Everyone in the village will certainly turn out to see the wedding anyway, I am warned.  Won´t it be fun for them when two men in suits come out of the town hall?  We will have to put David´s bevy of uncles in strategic points in the crowd to whap anyone on the head who feels compelled to verbally editorialize the event.  Fortunately the Spanish are a classy enough people to keep such opinions tastefully to themselves.

Next is the submission of paperwork for review, all twenty pages or so of assorted documents compiled from two different, though not dissimilar lists.  Then there will be the actual review, and an interview of us both, since I am not Spanish.  Then we should be approved and can contact the village.  Now the stressful part begins.  I make mental notes of David´s toothpaste habits, his cousins´names, and anything I can glean about his now deceased parents and his childhood for fielding future questions.