Five years ago today, we were married in the Palazzo Publico in Siena, Italy.

Here’s a copy of our blog post/announcement when we returned to planet Earth. 🙂

Yep, we eloped! We’ve been BURSTING to tell everyone for the past couple of months! We got the idea to get married in Europe about two months ago, and we’ve been working on the paperwork since.

We knew that we were going to be in Spain for almost 10 days, and our plan was to drive through the south of France and stay in Tuscany for a few days before we ended our trip at our company’s Summit Conference in Rome. Spain and France had too many residency issues, so we targeted Italy. We dropped the idea of driving from Spain to Italy in favor of a more relaxed trip, spending more quiet, quality time in a villa in Tuscany.

But… before we could even think about really getting married, there was paperwork to do.

We hired a wedding planner to assist us through the process… Lady Kelly Hayes. She was fantastic!

Both of us had to have new birth certificates issued by the states of Georgia and New Jersey. After the birth certificates were issued (with special stamps recognized by Italy), both certificates had to be sent to the Secretary of State of the issuing state for an Apostile Seal, recognized by the Hague Convention as being valid by other members of the convention. Being that we live on the west coast, all of this had to be done remotely – and fast.

Next, all documents had to be translated into Italian.

Finally, we made an appointment to visit the Italian Consulate in San Francisco so that we could be issued an Atto Notorio. An “atto notorio” is an afidavit sworn by two witnesses that acknowledge that “it is common knowledge and everyone knows that we are free to marry.” It was hysterical. After an hour or so of nervous excitement, an interview with the Consulate General, sworn testimony by two of our friends, lots of forms, stamps, etc., all the US portion of the paperwork was done! Here’s the guy himself… about to sign the documents that we were to take to Italy!