Waiting Game #1 (or international paperwork x 2)

Background: Mr and I are a transatlantic long-distance couple. I live in Scotland; he lives in the USA. We made the decision a long time ago that we would get married in the UK, and that I will eventually move to the USA. The wedding destination was ultimately my decision, and it was an incredibly hard decision to make. It means that the number of guests on his side will be smaller because fewer people can travel across to the UK and it also means that after the wedding we will be apart for longer as my spouse visa is being processed. It was not the cheapest and easiest option, but amongst all the choices, none of which were particularly cheap or easy, it was the one that allowed me to have a wedding in the UK with my family and friends (and especially my grandparents who are in their late 70s) and gain some great experience in my current job (which I feel I was lucky to get during this job market). Mr has been incredibly gracious and understanding, considering that this was not his first choice and it involves two visas instead of one.

Special Marriage Visit Visa: Anyone not from the UK but getting married in the UK needs to get a visa called the Special Visit Visa: Marriage in order to be able to get married (unless they are immigrating to the UK, that's a different visa. This is for visits of less than 6 months). So because Mr is from the USA, he needs this visa for us to be able to get married. He won't be allowed in the country without it and we won't be able to get a marriage licence without it.

Marriage license in Scotland: Anyone getting married in Scotland needs to go through the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). This must be done between 3 months and 15 days of the wedding: No more; no less. It states that anyone not from the UK must get a certificate of no impediment to register their marriage, but in the case of the USA this is not true; they are not available in the USA, and the GROS does not require them from US citizens (I called up and checked, in a mild panic). What they do need instead is a copy of the Special Visit Visa.

Waiting Game #1: Mr has sent off his visa application, so now we start waiting game number one, waiting for this to be processed and returned in enough time to then register the marriage. I've heard from my local MP and from our registrar (and from long extended grapevines) that couples can and do leave this too late, leaving them with a big expensive party and no wedding. We hope that we've time it correctly and that it'll all turn out fine, and the processing times on the UKBA website seem reasonable, but I can't help feeling nervous and very, very twitchy.

International paperwork part two: So the visa is one aspect of paperwork. Mr got the invites I designed (using a 30 day free trial of Adobe Illustrator) printed and I have heard that they are super. He was going to send them out, but instead sent them to me in a big box as most of the guests are in the UK. I want to get these invites sent out as soon as possible, but I'm waiting at the mercy of both our postal services for them, and it's likely they are delayed in customs while they stick a huge tax charge on for me to pay before I can get my mitts on them.

So we've checked a couple more things off the wedding checklist:
1. Visit visa application sent off.
2. Invites printed, guestlist drawn up (with most of our guest's addresses entered in a spreadsheet ready to be filled with RSVP and menu requests).
3. Accommodation and flights booked for Mr and his parents.

The LOLsome adventures of Bobby Billybog

Coming up with a registry is just one of the many troublesome things about arranging a wedding across an ocean, what with the currencies, the multiple addresses and the where to send things, and the very far away prospect of one day getting things shipped to the USA. That's a whole lot of price and hassle I'm not thinking about right now.

I was convinced that we couldn't have a 'normal' registry of actual physical gifts because of these factors, but Mark, and OBB showed me otherwise. Mark has had his heart set on good wedding china, and we'd already spent an afternoon walking around the King of Prussia mall eyeing up crockery and testing the weight of spoons in our hands, pretending to be the normal kind of couple who'd do this on a regular Sunday afternoon and not the kind of couple that only gets to spend Sunday afternoon together three times a year.

A couple of weekends ago I lounged on the sofa with the cat, my mum was cutting fabric for my dress (squee!) and listening to the football, while Mark and I surfed shopping websites together on Skype and picked our favourite china. It felt almost like a normal lazy afternoon, a long-distance tableau of domestic bliss!

So this month I had to do a lot of travelling to the Highlands for work - the kinds of places without phone reception or even ATMs. During a spell of signal on my phone I saw an email from Macy's in my gmail and guessed Mark had registered for the china. In the past week I got 4 or 5 more emails from Macy's, all vaguely spammy "Woohoo! Wedding Registry! Get Spendy! Look at this DEAL!" kinds of emails, which I tend to ignore but not delete for a while.

After I'd come back from business travel, and Mark had returned from his own business trip to Atlanta, we actually got a chance to chat on Skype and Mark told me that I had to 'activate' our registry (he got to have fun with the barcode bleeper all by his lonesome, not fair!). I found one of the emails from Macy's and loaded up the 'make a registry page' and after it tried to sell me Gold Reward Stars or something, AND a Macy's card, I finally set up a registry but it had nothing in it.

  Mark realised then that I'd started a new registry, not activated HIS one, so I tried to delete it, and when it wouldn't let me, I changed all the details to fake details, including the wedding date, made it private, and changed the account to an old email address. Yeah, I'd opened the "selling you the Gold Reward Stars" email and not the "activate your account" email by accident. Boob. But then the real 'activation' wouldn't work; first Mark couldn't find our special code and had to rummage round his paperwork, and then the computer was all confused because now I had two registries, kind of.

Mark gave in and called Macy's to explain and asked them to delete the one I made by accident, but because I'd changed some of the details, they couldn't find it in the system. The Macy's lady asked what the name of the couple was. It was still in my name, but the 'husband' was different. While still on the phone to Macy's, Mark asked me over webcam what I changed it to, exactly.

Me: Umm, Bobby Billybog.

Mark: You're kidding me? Um, ma'am, it's uh, Bobby Billybog.

I burst into fits of giggles and Mark was staring at me over Skype as he was trying to be serious to the Macy's lady. She asked to clarify all the details of mine and Bobby Billybog's wedding, for security purposes I imagine.

Mark: What address did you put, Gill?

Me: I can't remember. The zip code was the same. I don't know. It was something silly, like Silly Nanny Street (Family Guy reference).
Mark: Oh god...

The Macy's lady actually asked if that's where he lived. I'm not sure she quite understood what was going on. Mark even tried to explain to the poor lady that I was cracking up over webcam at him having to say silly things over the phone to a stranger.

So that's how I broke our registry and laughed myself daft at my future husband (a serious upstanding bloke who graduated from Military School) saying his 'name' was Bobby Billybog to Macy's while he was not laughing at all.

It's also how I have earned myself a new nickname from my serious upstanding future husband... Gilly Billybog. I know I totally deserve it

Hiatus

I like the word hiatus.

I'm going through a rebranding exercise. See you next year.

In the mean time, read this instead.

Changing my name; Changing me? Gladl(e)y.

After reading some literature and discourse on the symbolism and meanings of certain wedding traditions, and how these can/should/don't/shouldn't get shaken up by different and changing dynamics in the concept of marriage, I thought it would be worth writing a little note about why I am so stoked about changing my name.

I love my last name as is, because it's got some great heritage. It's what I was born into, and will always be. We have a clan and a tartan and a castle (sadly I don't own it, it's abandoned and dilapidated, but it's also called Fatlips Castle which is brilliant). My grandad has done a lot of work in our family history and I'm one of the few in my family who take an interest in the stories he can tell about our ancestors. Mr calls me Fatlips sometimes as a pet name, because I do have fat lips and I do pout them when I don't get my way.
But I have decided, myself, that I will change my last name when I get married.

First of all, a very serious but seemingly light-hearted reason: There is (currently) nobody else on facebook with my future name. I kind of like that. There are people with my current name, even within my own family. I feel that rather than losing my identity by adopting my man's moniker then, I will gain something rare. And because after we marry we will be separated physically/geographically for a while, I will have time to adjust to my new identity by myself, and become used to being a new individual. I've even registered my future name as a gmail address already.

Second, I see it as an opportunity to redefine myself, as me, but also as part of a new team, a new duo of crimefighting superheroes (that's me and my Mr). We're going to be Team Ladley. Some of our friends already refer to us in a jokingly celeb fashion as Gladley, which I LOVE.* It involves both of us and refers to both of us. It's also better than combining our last names, because Turnbull + Ladley = Turdley, and that's certainly less resplendent.

*Gillian is pronounced like Giraffe. But this is Gladley as in Glad. And I am Glad.

Commenting on Commentary

I'm sitting on the bus to the Political Innovation Camp in Edinburgh, and while I rarely blog in 'real time' I thought it'd be worth drafting some thoughts about citizen journalism and political commentary. I already introduced some ideas in a couple of posts below, but some interesting things have happened in these spheres in the past week that give some food for thought.

The first was Keith Olbermann's very temporary 'indefinite' suspension from MSNBC and his show Countdown over some undisclosed political donations. The donations are neither here nor there, but it was an interesting turn of events for a few reasons. First, the rally of support for Keith that manifested so rapidly over, of course, the Internet. Second, MSNBC's ability to spin the incident as demonstrable proof that the cable network is somehow more responsible and less overtly partisan or activist than Fox news. Third was Meghan McCain (daughter of Arizona Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain) defending Olbermann on account of his being a commentator, and not a journalist.

There are blurry distinctions between journalism and commentary, between bona fide media formats and citizen journalism/commentary. As I asserted before there are nuances in the codes and grammar of each, and also in the expectation the reader or viewer garners from each medium. There are some rules that all must adhere to, such as regarding libel, copyright, plagiarism, confidentiality, etc. But it'll be interesting to have discussions about how commentary and blogging is currently perceived and how it can be used.

The other events concern twitter tags such as #twitterjoketrial and #iamspartacus. Over on this side of the ocean we've seen instances of social media 'commentary' (jokes and flippant comments) becoming issues of a legal matter, but more so, issues of action. I'm sure plenty of media fans and politicos are watching these two Twitter tags with many levels of interest, as they add a different, slightly more alarming, facet to this conversation on commentary, blogging and connectivity.

Employed Kyle!

I've been following Kyle and his employment-seeking-technique with interest, and am very pleased to find out today that he is now happily employed. There was plenty of that there 'dogged determination' on display, for sure, as well as clever originality, so I'm glad his campaign worked, and indeed it worked well:

employkyle Kyle Clarke

63 days, 452 tweets, 13 interviews, 15 job offers, 1 new boss... And a lot of BIG thank yous!

Even more interestingly for me though, Kyle linked to my blog post about his intriguing job hunting methods. Apparently I should be 'properly loaded' for managing to get high Google ranks! Total fluke, though, sadly I must admit. Would that it were true!

What he had to say also highlighted something I've known for a while - that this design ain't doing much for me. I don't love it. Originally it was a vague, subtle pastiche of the Directgov Jobseeking site and it's not really relevant anymore. I slightly changed the by-line at the top there, but I'm certainly going to overhaul my interweb presence at some point soon.

Life as we know it

When I started this blog I intended it to be about employment, and then politics. I never really intended it to be very personal.

The other week I saw this movie at the cinema. It's everything you'd expect from a Rom Com, except that it's not particularly romantic, and not particularly comedic; it's incredibly sad. I'm not usually one for Hollywood fluff (who am I kidding? I wrote an important University paper on Snakes on a Plane, I wrote a blog post about Post Grad, I once saw and almost enjoyed a Jessica Simpson movie...) but for some reason 'life as we know it' had me crying throughout.

This year, for me, has been punctuated by bus-rides and airport scenes (and Skype screens). Buses are never glamourous, even in movies, but buses are almost always interesting and variable (though sometimes for the wrong reason). Airport scenes are almost like the kind you see in the movies, but they are usually three hours longer and so far removed from any movie glamour with the sleeplessness, the screaming children, the queuing, and the crumpled plastic bags filled with old lipsticks and vaseline. Red-eye to London, layover in Paris, long haul to the USA, traipsing around terminals in Heathrow; I've been to five different UK, one European, and three USA airports since June.

There is a helpless frustration about being a lone traveller sitting in an airport lounge or trundling solely through security, or sitting trapped in a window seat above the clouds. For all the months I spend apart from my fiance at any one time, the moment I missed him most was on a delayed long-haul flight this year, exactly one hour away from landing. I sat boxed in by the porthole window and watched the little plane creeping towards its destination on the screen in front me, and sobbed for that whole final hour because I just didn't want to be sitting waiting any longer. One hour later I was in my partner's arms, but it felt like an age at the time.

An acquaintance expressed his sympathy for how hard it must be for me to be apart from the person that I'm going to marry; I was floored.

The reason I was floored is because earlier this year his girlfriend was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Recently he ran a half marathon, and then he and a truly amazing group of people ran 10k and raised almost £10k for Cancer Research in her honour. It was truly a awe-inspiring moment in what I can only imagine is an extremely challenging period.

My mum got her annual memo at work about their office secret santa last week. This year, because sometimes people get secret santas that they don't know very well, everyone has been asked to put up their likes and suggested presents on this sheet of paper on a noticeboard. Being a sarcastic British lady, my mum was going to put "£5 note" as a suggested present. Instead she wrote the URL to donate to my friends' fantastic efforts in the 10k. You can donate here too if you like.

Earlier this year, in a lovely twist of fate, my gran got married, was given the all-clear from cancer and is now thinking about getting a tattoo to celebrate. Some of my friends have even said they'll happily get tattoos at the same time as my gran!

And on the other side of the world, while my gran decides what design she'd like, my fiance is cultivating a 'manly' moustache and raising money for the likes of Prostate Cancer and other mens' health charities, as part of the fantastically chappy Movember campaign. He's doing this partly for reasons close to his heart, and partly because I'm jealous I can't grow such great facial hair for such a great cause. Whether you live in the US, or the UK, you can also donate to my man's efforts to emulate Teddy Roosevelt and see a silly picture of me with a moustache (his hasn't grown in yet).

Important things are happening in the world, and my partner has just started his own blog to document some of them. But equally important things are also happening in life, as we know it, right now.