Chris Dragon

Just had my wife's Canadian passport picture taken at the local US Postal Service office for $15. They used a fancy camera that actually has templates on its screen for the face size/position requirements of most countries. They used a white background screen and a flash, which left a very small shadow an inch or so below my wife's ears. I hope that isn't going to be a problem. The clerk also stamped both pics with the office name/address, dated both and signed one of them before I could stop her. The instructions I had said nothing about the pictures being signed by the photographer and said only one picture should be stamped/dated, not both. She said most countries want the signature of the photographer. I also just realized she wrote the date but did not prefix it with "Photo taken" like the instructions show in the example. Anyway I hope the pics will be accepted despite all that. They all seem like minor things but sometimes bureaucrats are ridiculous about following instructions exactly.

Also, she only had a cutting device for 2x2 pictures but the instructions call for 2.75x2 so she said we could cut them at home. Since the camera was set to Canadian template it printed 2.75x2 (actually very slightly smaller so, again, I hope a slight white border isn't a problem). Since the pics weren't cut when she signed one, I noticed the bottom of one letter is going to be cut off when I cut the pic. Blarg. So the Canadian bureaucrats have plenty of little reasons to reject the pics but hopefully it will be ok. The lady at the post office mentioned that some countries charge exorbitant rates like $300 per application and if they reject your pictures they make you pay $300 again to submit new ones! So at least that's not a problem with Canada.

Ours took almost 3 weeks or so before getting the "certified copy" from the county clerk (LA county). "They" told me that they are backlogged so it takes all that time.. I dunno about others experiences but that's what happened to us.

In LA County we got married on 6-21-09 using the "confidential" form of marriage license that doesn't require witness signatures or let companies mine our license information to solicit us. The license itself says it should be delivered by the officiant or mailed by the officiant, but they didn't question the fact we delivered it ourselves. We took it to the Beverly Hills "County Clerk"'s office because the Van Nuys county clerk said the Beverly Hills office tended to have a short line. Indeed, the Van Nuys line was over an hour long while Beverly Hills had only one person in front of us. The clerk there said LA does not grant immediate certified copies of the license but that if you bring in a pre-paid $17 "express mail" stamp (it actually looks like a large postage stamp) purchased from the post office, they will use it to send your license back express mail. I found it rather odd we couldn't just pay them to buy their own express postage online, (the Van Nuys clerk had said we could pay for express mail but did not say anything about bringing our own stamp) but luckily it wasn't a far walk to the post office, then back to the clerk with the stamp.

The clerk told us that the license would be sent to the Norwalk office and arrive there by the next day. I asked if it would save time if we took it to Norwalk directly and she said it wouldn't make much difference. She said it would take two weeks to process even with the expedited stamp, which is the same thing the Van Nuys clerk told us. Surprisingly, it was processed and mailed to us in only four days (on the 25th). I didn't see it until the 30th, but I wasn't checking mail every day, and then it was a scramble to get the rest of the paperwork ready that I hadn't expected to need until at least a week later. I read somewhere that LA will usually process certificates with the express mail postage stamp before other certificates, and in our case I think that must have been true, but I'm surprised both clerks didn't know that when I specifically asked about it.

We did our interview at the Vancouver consulate last Tues. We didn't have such a cool friendly guy, but they weren't mean or anything. Surprisingly, she asked me a couple questions even though my fiance was technically the one being interviewed.

The one big hassle we had was the police report. My fiance got one that did not include her childhood name, which was changed when she was 12 due to her mother re-marrying. I noticed that a couple months ago and had her get a new report to include the missing name, but the RCMP officer told her it wasn't important since she hadn't used it since she was 12. Despite explaining this to the consulate, they insisted on getting a report on that missing name. The first woman said we needed to go back to Winnipeg to do that and they would mail the visa, delaying us by probably close to two weeks! Luckily another guy we spoke to there said we could go to the RCMP in Vancouver to get it done. We got there at 4 and they said come back between 7 and 2. Next day, got there at 10 (after the medical exam), they said they were going to lunch, come back at 1! Came back at 12:45, took over an hour (so we were almost too late to pick up the medical exam results - BTW, don't be late, cause we came back at 2:40 to ask a question and everyone was completely gone), cost $42 instead of $10, and we had to explain to them repeatedly why we were doing it there instead of in Winnipeg. Turns out my fiance's childhood name came up in the search! Luckily her description did not match the description of whoever had the criminal record, so we didn't need fingerprints.

We talked to another person at the consulate who hadn't gotten her birth certificate because she'd moved out of the country as a baby. The US consulate didn't buy that as an excuse and also didn't tell her she could go to the consulate for her country which was virtually across the street from the US consulate to take care of it.

So, the moral is to be very specific on following the consulate's instructions and have everything they ask for exactly right. They don't seem willing to bend any rules and they won't always give you the easiest/fastest solution if you have problems.

I got the flight and the moving trailer booked as soon as we knew our interview date, but for some reason I didn't think to book the hotel till about 7 days before the interview. The Barclay was full, but I did a search on kayak.com (which simply searches a bunch of other sites like priceline, hotels, hotwire, travelocity, etc) and it came up with a $37 USD option at "a 3-star hotel". Their gimmick is you don't know which hotel you get until you book, but I've booked a couple flights with that trick and it turned out well, so I did it and we ended up in the Holiday Inn just two blocks from the medical examiner and 0.8miles from the consulate.

After taxes, it ended up being closer to $49/night and parking is $17 CAD / night (I brought my car so we can drive the rest of the move), so it's not as great a deal as it first seemed, but you probably won't find better except at the hostle. You might also find cheaper parking if you try, but after reading reviews of the Howard Johnson hotel where someone talked about their car being vandalized and many complained of noise and plywood beds, I figured I'd stick with the underground parking here. The hotel itself is fairly nice - nothing extravagant, but comfortable, with free wifi and dinner appetizers. They were nice enough to let me check in early at 8am with no added fee. I was even able to book a third night through Hotwire for two days from now and luckily it gave me the same hotel. =)