Apostilles on Birth Certificates

Well, we're 38 days out from the wedding...and we hit our first "snag" this week with the birth certificate fiasco.

In order to make a wedding performed in a foreign country legal in the U.S., the birth certificates need to each carry an "apostille," which, we found out the hard way, is an official seal from the Secretary of State. So, the normal birth certificate copies won't do...having already FedExed both certificates down to Puerto Vallarta (for a cool $60.oo) we started looking into how much it costs to do this with the apostilles.

*Note to anyone else getting hitched outside of the USA - do NOT use any of the online 'apostille services' if you can help it. The cheapest we found using those companies to get these documents was ~$180.oo. For EACH birth certificate. Plus the extra cost to get them down to Mexico. Um, how about NO, Scott.

My mother - God bless her! - did a little sleuthing and found out we can get this done at the Office of the Secretary of State. Conveniently located in St. Paul, and we can get the documents certified for $5.00 each. What's more, we can get our birth certificates at the MN Department of Health (vs. the county in which we were born...for me that's a tad farther away than for Clint), again nicely situated in St. Paul. I guess it pays to live in the capitol.

We're still debating on whether or not to do the "official" service to make the marriage legal both in Mexico and here, since now we're up against a deadline on their end for translating both documents and putting together all the paperwork. That's my fault, but of course I thought I knew what the apostille was and wanted to send them the birth certificates at the latest date possible. Not that I don't trust them, but you know...the less time they have to lose/misplace them, the better :)

So, we'll see what we decide - I'm still awaiting a reply to see what our options are from the contact at Le Kliff. Other than that, recent wedding plans are going well!