We've both just IM'd Oren, and I'm showing him how to get to the forum. (Hmm, wasn't there a movie title like that? "A funny thing happened on the way to the forum"???
Anyway, thanks so much for your help! (And the congratulations!
We met in SL, and he moved all the way here from Australia to northeast America just to be with me after four visits on a tourist Visa and "dating" by Skype and virtual worlds until we finally decided to "take the plunge" and get married in 2013. (Talk about a long-distance relationship! That was REALLY hard! Especially on him travelling 36 hours each way, and, with my having become too disabled to travel, which I used to love to do, I've never been there. I've only talked to his parents on the telephone! And his father writes us long letters, although he's finally learned to use e-mail. His mum is the talker. 
)So, with his fourth 3-month tourist visa running out, we didn't have time to plan a full ceremony. (It's my second marriage, and the first one took me a whole YEAR to plan, and it was hard enough doing it with my first husband and I living in the same place, making so many decisions ... and then the Big Day finally arrived, and we were busy having our pictures taken and greeting everyone at the reception, cutting the cake, having our first dance, etc. ... and after years of dreaming about how romantic my "Big Day" would be, some of the people I wanted to be there most couldn't make it, and people were already leaving before we got back to our seats to eat our cake, and a whole year's worth of planning the "perfect" wedding was over in a few hours! It's a good thing my cousin made a video and we got so many pictures so we could see what we missed!)
So I didn't want to go through all that all over again but still wanted to make it meaningful. But by the time we'd decided to make our relationship permanent, we only had a few weeks to plan the small reception that we had, which was two days AFTER "BlackJack" and I actually got married at City Hall on a Monday afternoon with only my parents there as witnesses. We had to scrounge for friends (since I don't have many locally) who were available to attend a reception on a Wednesday evening! We never had a "proper" wedding in a church with a clergyman, so I'm thinking, hmm, maybe the pastor at Faith Chapel here might be willing to make it "official"? (Unless anyone can recommend other churches with clergymen willing to bless our marriage before God virtually, either here or another place on the Hypergrid?).
In fact, we've hardly left town since we got married, what with all the immigration problems we weren't warned about ahead of time. It's a looong story, but we put in the equivalent of what would've been a hundred billable hours if our lawyer hadn't led us to believe he'd have a Green Card and a job within three months! He got a work visa after three months, but, once he became a "conditional" permanent resident of the U.S., after he'd been legally driving in this for three months at a time for the previous four years on his Australian driver's license, he had to start from scratch getting an American driver's license. And without any work experience in this country despite his MANY different skills and ability to learn fast and do a great job at EVERYTHING he attempts, without a Green Card AND a U.S. driver's license, nobody would even CONSIDER him for a job! In fact, he did all the research required to sort everything out to the point where everyone was telling him he should be a paralegal. And, in fact, once we submitted all the paperwork to Homeland Security, I guess we did such a thorough job, they approved his Green Card in only TWO months instead of the estimated waiting time of four to FIVE months ... ON Valentine's Day 2014, almost a YEAR from the time he first got here and, after the second month, we decided just to go ahead and get married so he wouldn't have to keep making that grueling trip with multiple stopovers/plane transfers/running to gates at the far end of the airport in Los Angeles so he wouldn't miss his 14-hour connecting flight across the Pacific, followed by, train and then bus trips to a place where someone could pick him up by CAR to get him home to the tiny "outback" town where he lived. And then having to find a new temporary job until he could come back here again!
BTW, I know this is already WAY too long, but for anyone who thinks America has "open borders" or that simply marrying a U.S. citizen automatically grants you American citizenship, I have news for you: It's nowhere NEAR that simple. And even with a Green Card, until you apply and PAY to take the test--and the one thing that finally convinced my friend from Ireland to get citizenship after 40 years as a "resident alien," a not-very-welcoming term for your status, you can't vote, but even worse, they've started requiring that you RENEW your "resident alien" status every ten years, which requires official forms and more fees, if you get convicted of any kind of crime, you can be deported and banned from entering the country ever again! My friend had a DUI on his record and, coming back from a trip to Jamaica, he found that out and almost wasn't allowed back into the country. (He knows someone from Ireland that happened to, so the only time they can see each other is when his friend is in Canada, which our state shares a border with.) But the other thing stopping BOTH of them from getting their citizenship as soon as they were eligible (you have to wait three years after getting your Green Card to APPLY to take the test, and BlackJack keeps in touch with a group of Aussie ex-patriots here in the U.S. who told him they've made the test even HARDER than it was back when--if anybody here saw it an remembers--I used to watch the Craig Ferguson "Late Late Show," and he documented himself getting his citizenship here on film for the show, and the test was so much easier than he expected. I can't remember what year it was, but he it was well before he stopped hosting the show in 2015 after ten years.
Anyway, the thing that was holding my Irish friend back, and my husband feels exactly the same way, was that you can technically get "dual citizenship," but part of the oath you take in order get U.S. citizenship is that you renounce ALL allegiance to your former country. It makes sense technically, but for both of them, it feels like their being a traitor to their original home country, even though the U.S. is allied with both countries, and most people don't realize that Australia has fought with us in EVERY foreign war we've been in since they became a country! Australia is one of our CLOSEST allies in the world!
So ... the POINT of all the foregoing is that our first year of marriage, during which we were living off my disability and our combined savings that was totally depleted and I was in the process of applying for FOOD STAMPS and other social services when he FINALLY found a temporary job over a YEAR after we were married, and then the job went permanent. But the whole first year of our marriage was a VERY stressful time, and we never had the time or money for the small honeymoon we HAD planned to take. And all of that has led to my wanting to renew our vows and have our marriage blessed by God in front of witnesses--and even change our anniversary to Valentine's Day 2014! I wasn't thinking that our partnering in Kitely was any big deal until just today with everyone congratulating us. And knowing that there are churches ... and places we could explore in virtual worlds since I'm in too much chronic pain to travel anymore, I'm starting to think maybe this could be our chance to do that. And maybe I can convince what FEW of my relatives are still alive to create an account and join us. (Although I've been nagging friends and relative to join a virtual world ever since I discovered SL in 2008 but haven't had much luck. But since people have started getting used to "meeting" online since the pandemic lockdowns started and the so-called "Meta"-verse seems inevitable, maybe they'd be more open to the idea!)
OK, time to zip my fingers and post this. Oren will probably already have partnered us by the time I hit "Submit"! (Assuming I don't get an error message saying my post is too long!) *fingers crossed and signing off for now*
PS: Not to be redundant, but the Captain of my heart says I was right; we're already partners, woot!!!
Thanks for your help and support everyone! And thank you, Oren, for doing it so quickly while I've been here documenting our life story. And now to collapse into dreams of our virtual wedded bliss and set ("Black"--technically blond at the moment, but he told me a couple of weeks ago he wanted to be named after the Australian pirate!) "Jack" free onto the grid on the back of his new horse, Lonhro (if he's up to continuing without me for today, although I still have to show him how the HG works!). There should be more than enough to keep him busy in Coopersville alone! And then we can have our first dance on my-- I mean OUR island in Coopersville!!! (Won't Koshari be surprised--pleasantly, I hope--when she gets back!) Thanks for all your help getting us partnered and making him feel as welcome as you did for me over the past 44 days since I finally joined the grid! I'm happy to call it home and relieved to be on a grid that's been successful for the past 14 years and look forward to the next 14 or more!
