I got married! *warning - BIG pictures*

Hey evilDUers, just wanted to share the good news ... I just married my fiancee! We've been dating for almost a year and we finally went ahead and tied the knot. Im an English teacher in China and Ive been living here for about a year and a half. I met my wife Elf through a friend and we've been together ever since. Our anniversary is Halloween of all days so I guess Ive got no excuse to forget! The ceremony was a civil one, just to speed up the paperwork so we'll have a real, proper wedding once we come back to VA in the spring. Ill teach at our local school and she's going back to college.

Heres a picture of the happy couple.



PEACE
-Alec

p.s. Elf isnt too keen on Bush. "He should mind his own ****ing BUSINESS!" I believe is the way she put. One more :kick: to turn VA blue :)

:)..Good luck on the paperwork.. It can be daunting:)

I guess it depends on who you ask ;) Elf is 21 and Im 24 but all my little students say Im too old!

According to the Chinese zodiac Im a rooster and she's a rat, which is a very good match or so Im told. Then again my Dads a rooster and my Moms a rat and they've been happily married for 30 years now so I guess there may be something to it...

and much love and happiness to you both, and to all of your loved ones, now and in the future.

Great pic, by the way. Very attractive people.

journey through life together!!!!


:hug:

aA

:toast:

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

What a stunningingly beautiful couple. May you have many, many happy years ahead of you! :hi:

I love her name, too!

Be happy together for all of your lives!

And she already has an excellent opinion about Chimpy so she has at least two things going for her. :thumbsup:

What a good looking couple!

May you both have many years of happiness! :toast:

Where are you in China? One of my best friends met a girl while studying in Shanghai and moved there last year to live with his fiancee.

I am hopefully traveling there in March 2006.

Once again congratulations.

:party:

:woohoo:

She's very pretty! :)

now, when are you giving all the 'rents grandkids?

What an adorable couple! Wishing you both a lifetime of happiness.

Best wishes to you and your bride

:bounce: :bounce: :toast: :bounce: :bounce:

Embrace your life together with the same sweetness in that picture and have a long, happy future!

May you have a long and happy life together.

:toast:

Best of luck

:toast:

Thanks for the warm regards everybody! My new wife (man it feels wierd saying that) wants to say hi. She sees me reading DU every day so I guess she counts as a lurker. Here is her first Official Post as Mrs. AlecBGreen. Make her welcome :)

Hiiiiiiiiii, em, actually i don't know what to say but THANK you all!! (Alec's note: at this point she started giggling and cackling uncontrollably. Im sorry, ill let her keep typing ;) ) ^_^ I don't know what i'm laughing about... i might be too happy. haha... we are laughing together now... ok, thanks again. i'm going to bed. Thanks, thanks, thanks a lot, you know, i want to thank my parents, my friends, my fans, my company, of course, all of you guys. We couldn't have done it without you. I love you all( blowing kisses )! Thank you!( super loud before i get off the stage...)


-- Elf

I wish you many years of happiness with AlecBGreen. :D :hi:

You need to get your own sign-in name! Good luck in your new life together. I hope you'll enjoy living in the U.S. -- you'll have a better shot at it if we can get rid of Bush**.

You guys are gorgeous! Many congratulations and happy hugs to you both! Elf, welcome to DU!!

now both of you get back here to Virginia to help us paint it blue!! Congrats!!!

I hope you'll be very happy together.

Lovely couple, beautiful bride!

"Elf" is a cool name! Best wishes to you both!

:party: :toast: :applause:

:toast:

She's lovely, and what a sweet picture! I'm so happy for you!

Julie

I got a request for pictures, so here a few more...1st one is us on vacation in Tibet, 2nd is us with my brother in Lhasa, 3rd is the two most beautiful ladies in the Yunnan province (yes, thats what it looks like :smoke: ), the last is us in Lijiang.



Below is an email I wrote to my buddies after Elf and I got married...Read it and see what a marriage is like "Chinese-style"

Hey everybody! I know its been about 3 years since I last emailed yall but Ive been busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Ive been working full time, travelling all around Guizhou, and GETTING MARRIED! Thats right, dont rub your eyes and dont adjust your monitor...Alec and Elf are officially hitched. We got engaged in August but I didnt want to spoil the surprise until after we got married. Also it took 3 months to get all the paperwork sorted out and there were times when I thought it would never happen. But, October 31st 2005 (Halloween!) we finally did it. It was so stressful I just about gave myself an ulcer. Let me give you a small taste of Chinese bureaucracy ...

We got engaged in August but we were talking about it in June. We did a bunch of research and we found it would be easier to get married here than to have her come to the US as my fiancee. The visa processing time for a wife is only a few months but a fiancee visa can take YEARS. Once we decided to go ahead and get married here, we started researching Chinese marriage laws. On the surface it looks so easy - I just need my passport and a "certificate of marriageability," which is basically a sworn statement that says Im a handsome, eligible bachelor with no VD's and I want to marry somebody. We flew to the American embassy in Chengdu, got it, and were home the next day. Easy. Elf only needed to get her "hukou" which is basically her birth certificate, health and police records, and social security card all rolled into one booklet. Her university had it so we needed them to release it to her. We went on Sept 1st and we were told it would take a week. After a week went by we called and they said "one more week." After another week went by and we were told "one more week." Apparently her form had to be signed by her teacher and signed by the department head. After that they convened a committee to discuss the matter (I shit you not) to see if she "really needed it." After all that was done, almost a month later, they gave her a little piece of paper that needed to be stamped by all of the 14 different departments at the school! That took another week because they have several campuses but only one stamp for each department. In the end it took OVER A MONTH just to get this little piece of paper which authorized us to get her hukou.

After all this was finally taken care of we went to the head office at the University to get her hukou. They said it was at the local police station so we had to go there to get it. OK... We went, and the cops said they had upgraded to "digital" hukous. If we wanted a hard copy, we had to go to her hometown to get it. At this point we were so mad we were seriously contemplating a mass murder. Although it would have been IMMENSELY satisfying, it would've gotten us no closer to going home. We swallowed our fury and pressed on. We went to her hometown and this is where the shit really hit the fan. There were two major problems with her hukou - #1) Over the years her apartment complex had changed its name several times so no one was sure which name to put on her new, improved hukou. #2) When the police assigned her mother a social security number, they forgot to mark it as "taken" so they gave the same number to a different person. We couldnt get her new hukou until they sorted out the mess and gave her a new number. AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! We had reached Code Red. I cussed up a storm & Elf made lots of threats. The cops, who literally held our future in their hands, were NOT pleased. Her father is a big-wig in her hometown so he smoothed everything out for us and we finally got her hukou. We were told it would take a week (at most) ... it ended up taking 2 months.

Passport? Check. Certificate of marriagability? Check. Hukou? Check. We had everything we needed so went down to the marriage office and were married 20 minutes later at a cost of $1.15. Not too bad, eh? We went into a different room for wedding pictures and these two young ladies took a bunch of pictures of us. The room was decorated in a kind of "Vegas meets Valentines Day" theme...lots of hearts, velvet, and silk flowers. After they took the pictures they offered us a choice between two photo albums. They were typical Chinese knicknacks - cheap, tacky, and bound to fall apart within a week or two. Just out of curiosity, we asked how much they were. 400 RMB for the plain one, 500 RMB for the nice one. HOLY MOSES! Thats like $50 for a piece of cardboard with a few pictures in it. They made a CD with all the pictures in it so figured we could just print them out ourselves. They said "which one do you want?" We said thanks but no thanks! The girl just looked at us and was like "No...which one do you want?" We said "neither, thanks." She said it wasnt a choice ... If we wanted our marriage papers, we we're going to buy one, like it or not. I went from a happy groom to a spitting, cussing foreigner. CODE RED! Elf yelled at them and just I paced around the room muttering obscenities. The two girls just calmly said "theres a bank around the corner." Then they smiled at me. Thats when I really lost it! Before I did something I would later regret, I stormed out of the office and got the money. When I came back Elf had haggled them down to 200 RMB. That was for a CD with our pictures, a few small pictures for our marriage registry, and a "photo fee" of $10. One of the girls felt really bad about ripping us off so she gave the pictures they had already printed out.

Thus ends the great saga of our marriage. Hope you got a kick out of it. Oh wait, I forgot one more story...

We got married in China b/c it would make our return to the US a lot easier. However we still had to file the papers with the US embassy. After a few days of researching, downloading, and filling out forms, we were ready. We printed out more pictures (at outrageous prices I might add) and got ready to leave. The night before our flight we went to an internet bar. When we left, we found out that someone had walked off with my bag with all the marriage and immigration documents inside! ********ing son of a **********ing *****!!!!!!!!! Our flight left at 8 am the next morning so we went home and went to sleep. The next day we got to the embassy and filled out dozens of forms and documents, barely finishing before the 5 pm closing time. My hand is still cramped...We were told the processing would take 6-8 months and then we will be scheduled for an interview in a different city. If the interview goes well we'll get her visa that same day. If everything goes smoothly, we should be home by June. Elf will go back to college and I will teach for the Winchester Public School system and get the farm up and running. Now we play the waiting game...

All in all its been a stress-filled couple of months. We've been cheated, robbed, lied to and ripped off. On the other hand Im now married to the sweetest, cutest girl this side of heaven. It was worth it :) I hope you all are doing well and enjoying life. Cant wait to get home and share some good times again.Til then....

PEACE
-Alec

and you guys make a cute couple! Hope the immigration process goes better than the marriage one!

(about a year ago?).. Aren't you glad you went?

:yourock: :bounce:

And your story is amazing! Man, I thought the Germans were bad on the beaurocracy... wow. I'm so glad you managed to make it all work out, and I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that the Visa process is easier than the marriage process was! Best of luck to you, and thanks for sharing that awesome story! :bounce:

I think that's a wonderful picture of the two of you.

Much happiness to you both!

even better than the 2nd Fitz investigation? I find that hard to believe... :evilgrin:

... and happy beginnings! :thumbsup:

if i remember correctly. If you're ever single and living near DC let me know. My brother is there. Here're a few pics (some flattering, some not so ;) )



Not that he needs help getting hooked up, Im just saying. He's a really nice guy and a rabid Dem (worked for Rick Boucher (VA) and Ken Salazar). Ok now Im just rambling...I sound like an obsessed aunt playing matchmaker. Thanks for the good wishes! :hug:

-Alec & Elf

a warning to Elf: you just got all of us as quasi-in-laws, and there are 80,672 of us!:grouphug:

to you and elf....she`s totally in love with you,dam you are one lucky guy!

:toast::applause::toast::bounce::toast:

:toast:

I got my own sigh-up name!!!

It took me a while to find this message.


--Elf

and congratulations! :bounce:

That's a great pic!

Thanks for sharing the happy couple photo.

Today is Thanksgiving day in China!