Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 905, Getting a Marriage License.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 905.
I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan.
Coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website eslpodcom, has some additional courses in business and daily English that you might enjoy.
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This episode is a dialogue about someone who is going to get married and needs to get the official government marriage license.
Let's get started.
Help me fill out this application for our marriage license.
Can't you do it?
I'm really busy with work right now.
Do as much as you can and ask me if you don't know something.
Okay, I'll try, but I'm reading through the requirements and it's a good idea for both of us to know what they are.
Okay, then just read them out loud to me.
All right.
We need to bring identification, and it's best to bring our birth certificates just in case.
We don't need blood tests, and there's no waiting period in this state.
Are you listening?
For people who have been married before, they'll have to bring proof of divorce, death or annulment.
Okay, since you've been married before, you'll need to bring a copy of your final divorce decree.
Did you hear that?
Yeah, yeah.
We can choose any qualified officiant, and the marriage license is valid for 90 days.
That's 90 days to get married and have the marriage recorded.
We only have 90 days after we get the license to get married.
Got that?
Sure.
90 days.
No problem.
I'm starting to wonder.
If you don't have time to fill out our marriage license application, how will you make time for our wedding?
What?
I'm really busy right now.
Let's talk about it later.
Is it just me or does this conversation not bode well for our future marriage?
Our dialogue begins with Eve, which...
In English spelled E-V-E would be a woman's name, but this is the French Y-V-E-S, and so it's a man.
Eve says, help me fill out this application for our marriage license.
Eve and Vanessa are going to get married and when you get married in December, you have to fill out or complete an application.
An application is a form that you are required to complete with information about yourself.
This is an application for a marriage license.
The state governments in the United States each control the giving of marriage licenses.
A license is recognition by the government that you are officially married, that you are married according to the law.
That's a marriage license.
It's sort of like a license to drive, except you don't have to take a test to be married.
You probably should have to take a test to be married, but you don't.
You have to do that only if you want to drive a car.
Vanessa says, can't you do it?
Vanessa is very busy she says too busy to even help fill out the application for her marriage license.
Eve says okay, I'll try, but I'm reading through the requirements and it's a good idea for both of us to know what they are.
So Eve says, yes, I understand you're busy, but I think you should do this with me.
Vanessa says, okay, then just read them out loud to me.
Out loud means speaking the words so that other people can hear them.
The opposite of out loud would be in silence, or to yourself, where you read something but you're not saying anything as you're reading.
Eve says, okay.
Actually, he says, all right, which means okay.
We need to bring identification here.
And it's best to bring our birth certificates just in case.
Identification is some document that proves that you are who you say you are.
Typically, identification would be a driver's license or a passport.
But For some things, like getting married, some states might require a birth certificate which says you were born with this name at this place on this date.
Eve says we don't need blood tests, and there's no waiting period in this state.
Blood tests are analyses of your blood to determine if you have any diseases or illnesses that can be detected that way.
Many states used to require that the man and the woman getting married have a blood test.
I think there's still maybe one state that still requires blood tests.
The blood test is not to determine, as some people think, whether these two people are biologically compatible be a good match.
That, of course, isn't something you could figure out from a blood test.
If you could, we could save a lot of problems, but unfortunately you can't determine the most important things about the person you're getting married to by testing their blood.
No blood tests were used to make sure that one of the people getting married didn't have diseases that might harm the other person.
Specifically syphilis, which is a sexually transmitted disease, a disease that you get from someone who has the disease by having sexual relations with that person.
At one time, in the 1930s and 1940s, it was thought that syphilis was a big problem, and so we had to have blood tests to make sure that the disease didn't spread, didn't infect more people.
But it was decided that it wasn't as big a problem as people thought.
And so most of these blood tests in almost every state have been eliminated.
Interestingly enough however, the rate of syphilis has almost doubled in the United States in the last 10 years.
Eve says that we don't need blood tests.
And there's no waiting period in this state.
In some states, you can't just get married on the day that you decide to get married.
You can't go down and decide, I'm going to get married today.
Instead, you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can get your marriage license.
That's probably a good idea if you woke up this morning and said hmm, I'm going to get married today.
That's probably not a very good idea.
You should probably think about it for at least a few days.
As in the case of blood tests however, most states do not have a waiting period, or at least there are a lot of states that don't.
California does not.
So you can...
Fly to California and get married that same day.
Pretty exciting.
I don't recommend it, but you can do it.
States that do have waiting periods typically require that you wait only maybe three to five days, not very long.
Eve says, are you listening?
He thinks that Vanessa is not listening to him.
Vanessa, however, says, to every word, I'm listening to every word you say.
Go on.
Continue.
Eve says, for people who have been married before, they'll have to bring proof of divorce.
Proof is some sort of document or evidence, that or object that you have that demonstrates that what you are saying is true.
If you have been married and then have legally ended your marriage, have divorced your partner, you have to prove that.
You have to prove it typically through something called a divorce decree or a final divorce decree D-E-C-R-E-E.
A final divorce decree is just a piece of paper from the place where you were divorced, saying yes.
In fact, these two people are no longer married.
It's also possible, although it's not very common, that you can end a marriage not with divorce but with annulment.
Annulment, A-N-N.
U L M E N T is when you have a situation where something happens that makes the marriage invalid, that the conditions for marriage are not met.
One of the conditions for a couple to be legally married in most places, or at least in many places, is that they have sexual relations.
If they don't, the marriage can be annulled.
Marriage is not legally, technically a marriage until the couple has sexual relations.
Annulments, however, are quite rare.
Divorces, however, are not rare.
And in our story it looks like Vanessa has been married before and divorced, so she will need to bring proof of that.
Interesting statistic more second marriages fail than first marriages and more third marriages fail than second marriages.
You would think that people would have experience with marriage the first time and so the second time would be successful, but it's in fact just the opposite.
So if you've gotten a divorce once, you're much more likely to get a divorce again.
Vanessa doesn't seem to be listening to Eve.
Eve says, did you hear that?
And Vanessa says, yeah, yeah.
You can tell she's not interested.
Eve goes on, you can choose any qualified officiant.
An officiant O-F-F-I-C-I-A-N-T is usually a religious official a priest, a minister, a rabbi, an imam who is is recognized as a religious official and can therefore marry.
You can say that you are married.
You don't have to go to a religious official, however.
You can get married by someone from the government, by a judge, for example.
Eve says that the marriage license is valid for 90 days.
So you get your marriage license and then you must use that marriage license.
You must actually get married within 90 days.
You have to get married and then go back and return the license to the government to say yes, we got married on this date by this person.
That's having your marriage recorded.
To be recorded here means to be registered officially with the government.
Again, Eve asks Vanessa if she's listening, if she understands, and Vanessa says, sure, no problem.
Eve says, I'm starting to wonder.
I'm starting to have doubts.
If you don't have time to fill out our marriage license application...
How will you make time for our wedding?
To make time for something is to schedule something, to take some action to make sure that you have time for something.
Your wedding, of course, is the ceremony in which you get married.
It's those few minutes or perhaps hour during which you have the marriage ceremonies.
Vanessa says, what?
I'm really busy right now.
Let's talk about it later.
Eve says, is it just me or does this conversation not bode well for our future marriage?
The expression is it just me?
Or is used when we are sort of making a joke about Trying to say that it seems obvious to me, but other people do not seem to have noticed or don't seem to think it is obvious.
Is it just me means am I the only one who thinks this?
What does Eve think?
He thinks that this conversation that he has just had with Vanessa does not bode well for his marriage.
To bode well is to be a good sign.
To not bode well is to be a bad sign, an indication that something bad is going to happen in the future.
Now let's listen to our dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Help me fill out this application for our marriage license.
Can't you do it?
I'm really busy with work right now.
Do as much as you can and ask me if you don't know something.
Okay, I'll try, but I'm reading through the requirements and it's a good idea for both of us to know what they are.
Okay, then just read them out loud to me.
All right.
We need to bring identification and it's best to bring our birth certificates just in case.
We don't need blood tests, and there's no waiting period in this state.
Are you listening?
To every word.
Go on.
For people who have been married before, they'll have to bring proof of divorce, death or annulment.
Okay, since you've been married before, you'll need to bring a copy of your final divorce decree.
Did you hear that?
Yeah, yeah.
We can choose any qualified officiant, and the marriage license is valid for 90 days.
That's 90 days to get married and have the marriage recorded.
We only have 90 days after we get the license to get married.
Got that?
Sure.
90 days.
No problem.
I'm starting to wonder.
If you don't have time to fill out our marriage license application, how will you make time for our wedding?
What?
I'm really busy right now.
Let's talk about it later.
Is it just me or does this conversation not bode well for our future marriage?
She always makes time in her schedule to write some wonderful scripts.
And so we thank our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2013 by the Center for Educational Development.
