Marriage question(ssss) :)

[Wingetah]

My sailor and I have been together 3ish years and 2 of those years have been while he's in the navy. I am in school and will be graduating within the next year and our next step is marriage. I have heard it is stressful and there is a lot of paper work to be done and have no clue about any of this and how it gets done. I am currently in Ohio, and he is station at Kbay Hawaii and has a pretty good job on base where he'll be till January 2015... He has talked about getting married on paper first so that we can start all the paper work and have all that stressful stuff done so that when I graduate we can just have a ceromony and start our lives together finalllyyyyyy. Anyway, I guess I was just wondering what all has to be done, and if this is a terrible idea. 

[Emily-aaronsgirl11]

All the paperwork really isn't that bad. We got married when I was in WA for a visit one week.

After you get married, go and request a couple copies of the marriage certificate. These cost me about 2 dollars piece, plus they gave me a free one since my husband is in the military (and he has to give his command one). 

That day, I brought one of those copies to the Social Security office along with my driver's license and changed my last name. They gave me a paper stating that I had changed it and would receive the new card in the mail in 7-10 business days. Meanwhile, he brought in the marriage certificate to his work place and added me to his page 2. It took a day or two to get a signature of someone higher up in order to enroll me in DEERs.

This is where the tricky part for us came in. I didn't have my birth certificate with me, so Pass and ID would not enroll me in DEERs. And I had to leave the next day to go back to Ohio. Sooo. Either my husband had to get a Power of Attorney giving me permission to enroll myself in DEERs, or I had to send my driver's license, social security card, and birth certificate to him for him to do it and then get my photo ID at a later time when we were together again. My husband went and got the Power of Attorney and sent it my way. I then made an appointment at the Air Force base near my home (not really, it was an hour away) and brought in all my paperwork. They enrolled me in DEERs and I got my ID. 

And that was that. He started getting the housing allowance the next paycheck and we were done with paperwork. It really wasn't that bad. 

Getting married on paper isn't a bad idea… but I will say that it's not easy to be apart from him after you say I do. We had thought about not telling anyone, but as soon as we were married, I wanted to tell the entire world. And it made being apart for a few months while I packed up my life that much harder. Getting married isn't going to be the stressful part.. it's going to be planning the wedding and moving afterwards. All the paperworks stuff is easy. 

I could see him wanting to get married on paper so that you're on his orders when he PCS's. That would make it so the Navy would pay to move your stuff from Hawaii (if it's there) to wherever he goes next. 

Good luck with everything!

[Wingetah]

Thank you veryy much! That is really helpful!! Yeah I'm kind of hesitant to get married on paper for that reason, he mentioned it, and actually talked about doing it when i last saw him, but I don't know if i could handle that, I think it would make the distance, and staying in school harder.

[Anti M]

It only makes it harder if you decide it is harder.  You aren't going to be doing anything different daily, and you can handle that.  Decide it is something you can do, I bet you'll be just fine.  Getting married without moving in together is just one thing checked off a list and a new step toward your new life.  You just have to get your head around your unique situation.  If you have friends and family dragging you down about being married long distance, you must be firm with them and demand positive support.

You can do this.  

[Wingetah]

Thank you for the encouragement! Your are so right!

[Emily-aaronsgirl11]

I saw you liven Oxford. Do you go to Miami? 
I have an online Navy Wife friend that actually went there before she decided to get married and move to VA!

[Wingetah]

Yes I do :)

[Emily-aaronsgirl11]

I'm kind of from that area. The same side of the state at least. haha. When I went to get my ID, I had to go to Wright Patt in Dayton. 

If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer what I can!

Good luck!

[Wingetah]

Oh yeah that's close!! Thank you so much!!

[Fur&FeathersDVM]

I'm another Redhawk. :) My husband and I are Miami Mergers! We both went there for undergrad. Anyway, my husband and I got married and then had to live apart for several years due to my vet school at Ohio State. All the paperwork following the wedding really isn't as bad as some people make it out to be, just call the base you'll be going to ahead of time to make sure you have all the paperwork they require, make yourself an appointment, and it won't take long at all.  It took maybe half an hour to get me all set up. :)   And my husband's admin department was fantastic about doing their end of things, they told us ahead of time what they'd need so my husband was prepared to meet with them once he was back at work.

As for living apart as a married couple, I felt that the day to day wasn't too bad, but I would get sad when I saw what other newlywed couples were doing and I felt bad that I wasn't experiencing that.  Special occasions when he couldn't be there were also tough, although that was usually due to deployment/underway, so it's not like he would have been there if I lived with him anyway! We've been married several years now, just moved into our first house together, and did our first PCS together and it's GREAT to feel like newlyweds all over again! A lot of those couples I was envious of before seem to now take the joy of living with their spouse for granted.  Lots of military couples find themselves in this situation, and you have already survived distance as a couple- you know you can do this!  I had a lot of civilian friends who lived apart from their spouses too due to veterinary school, and they made it work just fine as well. I absolutely agree, if you decide you can do it, you can do it. Your day to day life truly does not change much once you're married so if you've survived it this long, you can absolutely handle this. Good luck!!  (PS- enjoy your last bit of time at Miami- I promise you will miss it!!!)

[Wingetah]

Ahhh! Miami merger!! such a small world! thank you for the words of wisdom! it is always so comforting to hear from people who have been in the same situation as you! Thank you for the encouragement and I will enjoy miami while i'm here :)

[Jenn_NicksWifey]

The stressful stuff is really only when there are time frames to meet.  Like, getting all the stuff handled before orders are cut, or before moves or something like that.  It sounds like you will not need to worry about that stuff.  I would strongly advise a Justice of the Peace - type wedding.  Actually, I would advise that to any young person looking to get married because the big expensive weddings just don't make financial sense to me - why blow thousands of dollars on a one day event when you can invest that in a home/car/debt paying/something productive that will actually improve the quality of your lives for more than one day.  But yes, a JoP wedding, then you can get the paperwork rolling.  Emily seems to have given you a pretty good list, so I won't repeat. 

One other thing I would add is to get yourself a copier/scanner/printer.  I picked mine up at Wal-Mart for $50 and it has been SO useful with this military life thing we've got going on.  I keep digital copies of all documents that I might need and I put them on an external hard drive.  I have copies of everyone's birth certificates, SS cards, our marriage certificate and driver's licenses, my divorce decree from first marriage, custody papers for my oldest child (from first marriage), lease agreements, housing stuff, all of my husbands paystubs (called LES) and copies of this orders.  If you save them on an external hard drive, they are safer than on your computer because if the computer is hacked, and the drive in unplugged in the drawer, it's not at risk.  And they are there without digging through papers.  Plus, a lot of things you can do electronically.  Like, I did all of our housing application stuff electronically and I'm about to email our bank a copy of his orders because of the Credit Relief Act thing that lowers interest rates for active duty.  Our bank also throws in a ton of perks, but they ask that you send proof of active duty status.  Anyway, that's my schtick. 

Best of luck and congrats on being on your way to getting married! 

[Wingetah]

Thanks for the advice! I agree with you on not having a big wedding, need to save as much as possible! Also, the scanner/copier sounds like a very good idea, never thought of that but would definitely be a safe and good move. Thank you so much for taking the time to give advice! Hope you're having an awesome week!