Our Love Story of Crossing Borders Continues
When I came home from my Canada adventure, Christopher followed a month later. He plotted with my mom to come down for Christmas and surprise me. December 21st, 2006, the Holiday Blizzard. It dropped 30 inches of snow and shut down Denver International Airport. Unfortunately leaving upwards of 40,000 people stranded at DIA. I still had no idea what was going on, but my mom was a little on edge. On December 23rd my mom told me I needed to go with her to the airport. We were supposedly going to pick up my Grandma. Low and behold it was not my Grandma who came around the corner.
As Christopher came into view tears began to roll down my cheeks. The excitement I felt was beyond words. That evening at my house with my family and my two younger children, Christopher brought out this BIG wrapped box. Inside that box, there were more boxes of different sizes. There was even a giant rock ( it was a clue, and I had no idea). Then there were some pinto beans, mac and cheese and a little note with each present. The last gift was him kneeling in front of me with a box wrapped in a handkerchief and twine. At that moment he asked me to marry him. With tears streaming down my face and my children sitting beside me, I sputtered out between sobs… YES!
It Almost Didn’t Happen!
You know how everyone has those crazy stories about things happening on or before their wedding day. I thought we were going to be safe from this. I thought we had everything covered. The first step was hiring an immigration Lawyer to make sure we did everything by the books. We were fortunate since Christopher is from Canada. We didn’t have to go through the hassle of a fiance visa. So we did everything that the Lawyer told us to do. We gathered all our important information, which was literally everything.
Christopher and I traveled back and forth between the USA and Canada. We took tons of pictures at landmarks with my children in them and us. We also had to submit our phone records, emails, and anything that could prove that we were in a real relationship. Talk about jumping through the hoops, but we knew we would have to do it. So we did everything the lawyer asked of us. Then about 20 days before our wedding we went to get our marriage license WOOHOO!!
This is where the crazy comes in…Christopher and I went to our County Clerk to file for our marriage license, and they asked for his I-90 stamp in his passport. Well, we didn’t have that. He wasn’t yet a permanent resident, and since he is from Canada, our Lawyer informed us he didn’t have to have any Visa at all. So we had nothing and they denied us our marriage license. I was a bit freaked out, and of course, I was crying and begging the clerk to please let us file for our marriage license. I was a hysterical mess! The clerk must have taken pity on me because she told us if we went to this one specific county we would be able to file. With my ugly cry, makeup running face we headed to the next county clerk.
I was so nervous when we got their and Christopher was all calm and chill. We walked in and asked to file for a marriage license and VOILA. No questions or anything we filled out our paperwork and got our license. Once that ordeal was over everything else was pretty smooth sailing.
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