Paper View

After weeks of agonizing over the birth certificate conundrum, I finally FedExed two of my requirements for the marriage license and wedding banns last monday with his birthday present (H is an April Fool).

Just to tally, there are four documents required from me, according to the mairie (city hall) in Paris and Lot:

1. An accomplished questionnaire (filled it out hours before I went back to Manila)
2. CENOMAR or Certificate of No Marriage from the NSO, also known as the Affidavit of Marital Status, no more than 6 months old - Malacañang and DFA authanticated
3. Birth Certificate from the Local Civil Registrar, NOT a photocopy of hospital birth certificate and no more than 6 months old - Malacañang and DFA authanticated
4. Certificat de Coutume from the Philippine Embassy in France

             *All pages must have official translations


Looks pretty easy, and the certificates should only be 6 months old by the time we get married so I thought I should wait until May. But after ticking off the marriage visa requirements I realized I needed the wedding banns for the visa so I had to process the papers much earlier.

The Cenomar was the easiest to get. I paid P430 through Metrobank to have it delivered at work. I got it 6 days later.

My original plan was to go to the NSO serbilis center on my lunch break but that place was PURE HELL at 12nn. The industrial fans did nothing more than to pump the garage they call an office with more hot, polluted air. And with 600 people in line before me I wasn't sure I was going to make it out alive. So I paid double for Teleserv, the courier service. The nice thing I realized that day was if you talked to grumpy government employees with a smile they can't help but smile back :)

The BC situation was complicated. When H and I went to the mairie with stoopid grins on our faces, the woman at the family affairs department showed us the papers I needed to provide. The one thing I noticed was that the birth certificate was nothing like my NSO birth cert. She said it should come from city hall, typewritten and not a photocopy of the hospital form. She was very specific about this.

So off I went to Manila City Hall. I asked my boss for half the day off, wore a summer shirt, brought a thick paperback and psyched myself up for the long wait, but I was done in less than an hour. I just filled up a form, waited in the air-conditioned room for ten minutes, answered a few questions about why I need the certificate and paid P30 at the accounting office on the other side of the building. Then I was told I could pick it up at 1pm the next day. When I came back the next day, I got something that looked like this:

It's A PHOTOCOPY. Stamped with the words "certified XEROX COPY." I almost lost it. All that trouble for a piece of paper I could have ordered by phone from the NSO all along? This cannot be!!! 

I asked about 3 city hall employees about the typewritten birth certificate and no one knew what I was talking about. They said there was only one kind of birth certificate and it was the paper I was waving around. Afraid and confused, I left city hall trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to get the prescribed birth certificate. I got no answers anywhere.  A google search confirmed that the city hall and NSO birth certificates are indeed different, but that the NSO copy is more recognized and accepted in the Philippines. But that doesn't help me any, does it? To make things worse, I was supposed to go to Malacanang and the DFA after - that means 2 more weeks if I was unlucky enough to be a casualty of the long weekend ahead.

So after a conversation with H on Skype that ended up in tears (I don't know how it spiraled into that but it did), I consulted the French Consul (whom I erroneously addressed as "Sir") and she said the NSO BC is ok, and they could authenticate it after the DFA for P1,200. 

I kind of looked like this after I read the e-mail:

 

image from here

But then maybe I don't need it. I crossed my fingers, prayed hard and formulated plans A and B. I made some phone calls at 3am and then went to work on plan A: Take the city hall Xerox to the NSO and have it DFA authenticated. Plan B was to get an NSO BC just in case, have it authenticated too and send both with the CENOMAR to France. Not an easy feat since I had a very busy week, deadlines breathing down my neck, and friends wondering why I seem so antisocial lately BUT I managed.

I went to the office at 8:30am, made some phone calls and confirmed what I read on the internet - I didn’t have to go to malacanang as a step to get the red ribbon from the DFA – they eliminated that step 2 or 3 years ago. Great! I went to the NSO around 9am, the line was quick and everything was over in 30 minutes. I gave them the city hall birth certificate for authentication and made a request for the NSO BC for plan B. Then THEY TOLD ME I COULD GET BOTH AT 1pm. Huzzah!

So I went back to the office, acted busy, and then went back to NSO at 1pm. I got my new BC in yellow SECPA, and they gave me the city hall BC back stapled with a photocopy of the birth certificate ALSO IN SECPA! That is "authentication?" WHAT THE HELL? All this trouble for that piece of paper when I had it all along. Well, at least it’s new in case they checked for validity. 

Ok, now I had all the papers I needed, plus an extra birth certificate, I was heading back to the office WHEN I HAD A BETTER IDEA. I took to the MRT and started for the new DFA office even though I didn’t know how... By some miracle I got to the DFA in an hour, there was an earthquake but I didn't even notice. I only found out when I saw GMA Flash Report on the bus. I'd NEVER felt any of the 4 earthquakes of my lifetime. Never.  But I digress... (as always...)

This is what the whole fuss is about - the DFA red ribbons (H calls them "ribbans", how cute is that?)

To get DFA authentication, I paid P200 for rush processing. I was supposed to get it the next day but I had a shoot so I paid for delivery and I got the CENOMAR and BC with DFA ribbons the following Monday, and had them FedExed that same morning. FedEx is P400 more expensive than JRS (via UPS) but I went with them because the latter was operating on Pinoy Time - the woman at the counter said they can deliver in 4-5 days but because of Holy Week the package will possibly-maybe get to France next week. Ha? The feds delivered in 3 days :)

The  Certificat de Coutume is quite easy to get, we just need to e-mail the following to the Philippine embassy and pay 25 euros:

1. scanned passports - his and hers
2. scanned id pictures - his and hers

He will handle this next week and we'll get it in 5 days. Et voila! I hope...