The rocky path in getting marriage certificate

Objective:
A man (boyfriend) and a woman (me), who loves each other, wanting to get married and legalize the marriage. Bottomline, we want to get the marriage certificate.

Obstacles:
1. Different nationality. I am Indonesian and boyfriend is Malaysian.
2. Different religion. I was a Buddhist and boyfriend is a Christian. It was stated clearly in the documents, my IC, etc, we cannot lie to the officer.
3. Malaysia allows marriage between Buddhist-Christian, but Indonesian doesn’t allow that.

Process of getting marriage certificate:
1. Through the process, we found out that inter-religion marriage is not allowed in Indonesia. We did try to register in Malaysia first, but Indonesia Consulate insisted of not giving me the necessary statement letter hence we couldn’t move on to the next step.

2. Either one of us has to convert religion legally. Since I grow up with the mindset that a woman should follow her husband, I decided to change my religion on the paper, from my IC (Identity Card) to other documents.

3. But that is not as easy as telling the officer that I already a Christian and voila, they make changes on my IC. I have to show a proof or statement from the church. To get that statement, I have to go through the baptist path.

4. Baptist to me, is a very important thing. I could be a Buddhist who practice KongHuCu at the same time, but I never been ‘baptized in the temple’ (I don’t know what is the correct word in Buddhism) cause I’m not ready yet. After much consideration, I go for baptist path since it is the only way out. *appreciate if you not judging me and my decision*

5. Now, I am basically waiting for the baptism paper so that I can have my IC and other necessary documents changed.

6. Problem doesn’t stop here. Yesterday, I went to civil office (read: catatan sipil) only to find out that : to file the marriage in Indonesia, we need to have a marriage certificate from church or temple – depends on one’s religion. On another side, Malaysia doesn’t have that requirement – you can register your marriage in the civil office without the need to marry in church/temple first.

7. Next problem: to have our wedding done in a church, we need to have our baptist paper and need to be a member of the church. So, I am waiting for my baptist paper but boyfriend doesn’t have one. He, who has been staying in KL for more than 6 years, is not a member of any churches in his hometown too.

8. We have thought of the solution and will have an extremely simple kind of wedding church in Medan. But everything is yet to be confirmed. Hopefully it will go well.

9. Through the process in boyfriend’s hometown few weeks ago, we found someone who claimed to be capable of obtaining the marriage certificate in both countries – Malaysia and Indonesia, at the fee of RM10,000. Boyfriend and I were so frustrated and tired with the process already, it did come across our mind to just throw that sum of money and have everything settle by that person, so that we can focus on our work. But, our parents woke us up that it is better to settle it ourselves, although it takes time. Oh well, it’s RM10,000 and not RM1,000. Forget it.

I just have one thing to rant. Bear in mind, this rant comes from someone who has a very little knowledge about Christian and church related stuff. You see, I can somewhat understand the must-have-baptist-paper part, but I can’t understand why someone have to be a member of a church first then only can have a wedding church there? It sounds silly and unfair. Much like: you can’t enter the VIP lounge in the airport because you don’t have member card.

IMHO, Church is just a media of the religion – Christian. We don’t suppose to belong to a particular church but the religion. I know Christian is divided into a few – Methodist, Protestant, Catholic, Charismatic, and many more. I can accept it if the reason is because they don’t want a Protestant to marry in a Catholic church, for example. But it is super ridiculous if they don’t allow a Protestant to marry in a Protestant church just because he/she is not a member of the church!

Be in my shoes to understand where does all this frustrations come from.

Put aside all those frustrations and troubles, cause I just knew a super good news! Since last year (if I not mistaken), Indonesians can link our Paypal account and our local Bank accounts, which means we can withdraw the money directly into our Bank accounts. While Malaysia didn’t have that feature yet. They need to transfer into credit card or debit card of particular Banks.

But not anymore! Cause Paypal has add in the new feature : Withdraw funds from Malaysia PayPal account to your local bank account. Withdrawal for more than RM400 is FREE of charge! There goes the time of withdrawing to credit/debit card, being charged RM5 for every withdrawal, and USD500 as maximum withdrawal amount per day. Hooray for the improvement! As if they know that I will be migrating to Malaysia soon that they make the withdrawal process easier.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Interesting Findings, Relationship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.