Bureaucracy 1 (there will likely be more bureaucratic issues to come!)

We were more than a little stressed the Thursday before our wedding after getting our marriage license to be told that the standard procedure for the state of Hawaii is for the wedding certificate to come to us in the mail approximately 120 days after our wedding. The big problem was that we needed it in NEW ZEALAND only 7 days later for Victoria's new passport and for the US immigration people at the consulate. Ron the celebrant said that in his 15 years in Hawaii, the fastest he had heard of was 3-4 weeks and only once did he know of a couple getting a faxed copy at all as that is just not done. So praying, praying, praying was done by us and so many other people! At 9am on Friday 17th when we were preparing to leave Maui, the Honolulu office phoned to say that they were sorry that they could not post our marriage certificate before then, but that they were about to fax it to us. Wow - a fax was better than nothing at all! So then we had a copy in hand that we were pretty sure would suffice for the NZ passport people (even though we knew it would not for the immigration people). It was definitely enough for the AA people in Auckland issuing the international drivers licence who were more interested in the "Certificate of Marriage" from the Grand Wailea (complete with gold seal with a 'loveheart tree' on it) than they were in the real one 'that's just a letter from the Hawaii Department of Health Records'.
Back in NZ on Monday 20th, exactly a week after our wedding what should appear by courier but the original of the marriage registration certificate!!! So now we had a faxed copy and an original! Amazing! - 5 working days and across the world as opposed to the official process of 4 months! On arrival at the US consulate for the big interview on Thursday 23rd there was yet another courier envelope containing another official copy of the certification! God surely can work miracles!!!!