The Wedding Story

Beating the system

We decided to ask a friendly couple, a printer and his German wife, to be our witnesses. I couldn’t think of two people better qualified. They’d gone through a similar experience a year earlier, after she left Germany to come and live with him in Switzerland. Unfortunately, in spite of having an editorial job lined up, her application for a work permit was declined. This meant that to live and work in Switzerland, legally, the couple had no other choice. They had to get married.

It seems like an easy enough thing to do, getting married. Under the circumstances, it’s the only rational solution to a bureaucracy that’s unequipped to handle a modern-day relationship. I mean, these days we’re not just upwardly mobile, we have money and travel for work, as well as for leisure. We get out and about, we are educated, we meet people from different cultures, we are multilingual, we are part of the global village. This is not a recent phenomenon. Most of us have parents whose nationalities differ and who come from countries other than the one we were born in. Obviously, there’s a great deal of moving and mixing in the world. Bonds are formed between lovers from very different cultures and societies all the time. But the law remains oblivious, refusing to acknowledge reality. It persists in forcing defacto couples to make a choice between lifelong commitment and separation.

Only those who have shared such an experience can fully understand how taxing it is, for a couple, to put one’s love through such a test. To face redundant procedures, which require proof that our wish to be together is genuine. Meanwhile, we re treated with suspicion, as outlaws wanting to sham the system of social benefits, or rob the good citizens of their employment opportunities. We’re just two people in love, but here, our most intimate feelings are publicly scrutinised. And while the government officials work their antiquated system and digest the application forms, the couple must endure months of uncertainty about their future together.

Our friends gathered their paperwork and flew to New York for a week. There, they got married without fuss. They bought their wedding bands from a market stall in Chinatown.