A few months ago Arthur and I went to declare our marriage, something you have to do in the UK unless you get married in the Church of England. It basically involves going to your local register office (in our case Bath Guildhall), confirming when and where your marriage or civil partnership will take place, as well as some details about yourselves. Once you've done this you can't change the location of the marriage/civil partnership without declaring it again. And the declaration costs £67, joke. Once you've registered all of your details they're displayed for 17 days, ostensibly in case somebody wants to object.
I did think the whole process was designed to rip people off just that little bit more, and partly I still do; how can a 20 minute appointment, printing 3 copies of the declaration and posting two of them cost £67??? However, I realised at the appointment that making everyone declare their marriage is a good way to highlight forced marriage and 'sham' marriages, and that's got to be a positive. Thinking about it I s'pose I'm not exactly against 'sham' marriages - which are usually for immigration purposes - I think if people are desparate enough to get the right to live and work in the E.U that they're willing to marry someone for it, then they probably have pretty compelling reasons. But it doesn't do marriage any favours as an institution, and people really shouldn't be forced into a corner like that - RAAH immigration law anger.
Back to the point: requiring that people who want to get married or partnered go to individual appointments where they confirm some basic details about their partner seems a little odd when you're in a genuine relationship - but I can see why they do it. So far so good, but there was something that happened at the appointment that wasn't so cool. Firstly the registrar asked us who was paying and we said Arthur was (because it's a joint account anyway, and I had to rush to uni after my portion of the interview so he would be staying afterwards to pay). Her reaction was 'start as you mean to go on' seriously, direct quote. But we just laughed it off, maybe she was totally joking, like 'hahaha we used to think marriage was like this, haven't we moved on'. I kind of got the impression that she was a reasonably nice person, but had to do a reasonably backwards old fashioned job, hmmm. So that sucked, but not too much. What really bothered me was this exchange:
Registrar: Do you want to put your father's name on the declaration?
Me: umm why? err, what just my dad's? Not my mum's as well?
Registrar: No, just your dad's, it goes back to when women were property.
Me: laughs nervously. Do I have to, can't I put both of their names? Or my mum's?
Registrar: No. You could leave it blank but then it will look like you don't know who your father is.
Long awkward pause.
Me: Oh, well I don't want to offend my Dad. I suppose I can put his name on.
What was I thinking??? This is plain wrong, yeah I don't want to offend my dad, but he probably would never have known, and it's just wrong! So I was annoyed with myself afterwards, but then when I spoke to Arthur about it I was even more annoyed, because he hadn't been pressured at all. The registrar had just said 'you can put your dad's name on the declaration if you want' and then, here's the really annoying bit, she said 'you don't have to, or you could put anybody else's name, a guardian for example.' Whaaaat? Not cool. Really not cool.
Ugh, I don't really know what the positive outcome of all of this is. Maybe that it's over. I knew marriage law in the UK was old and outdated, but I really didn't expect it to hit me in the face like this. I'm left wondering if the registrar was a nice person being beleaguered by the unpleasant requirements of her job, or if she was some kind of scary bigot not doing her job properly. Who knows, but the whole thing was pretty sour for me. I'm trying not to let things like this affect my feelings about the whole marriage thing. I have to keep telling myself this is OUR marriage, it will be about what WE want it to be about. It's between the two of us, nobody else. But it's hard, there's so much historical baggage, I do sometimes feel that stepping into the shadow of it I'll be overwhelmed.
