We are start­ing to get things sorted out. We’ve had our mar­riage papers now for sev­eral weeks and finally filled them out. They were so help­ful to include a blank doc­u­ment in which each line had been num­bered with the cor­re­spond­ing direc­tions for each space in Eng­lish. Oth­er­wise we’d never had known what to write. So the forms are filled out. The nice thing is that we can have our best man and best woman wit­ness the papers for us here. They don’t have to be there with us in Ice­land. They sign off on the let­ters of hon­our.

My friend Cheryl gra­ciously vouched for me that I am me. And Greg’s best friend James has done the same. The Best man actu­ally has to cer­tify in sev­eral places, vouch­ing for both Greg and I. I’m sorry that these spe­cial peo­ple won’t be able to be there with us, but what can you do? For­ever their sig­na­tures will be on record at the Magistrate’s office in Reykjavik.

Greg bought a great Canon Cam­corder which records in high def­i­n­i­tion, plus we’ll take the dig­i­tal cam­era so we’ll photo-document every­thing and can share with friends and family.

Last night PBS had a spe­cial on Super Vol­ca­noes and specif­i­cally spoke of Ice­land. It is fun to see pic­tures of the Island, one with more active vol­ca­noes than any­where else. It really is a gor­geous place. By 2008 they say that they’ll not rely on oil at all there b/c of all the geot­her­mal energy. It must be great to have hot springs all over the place par­tic­u­larly through­out the cold and dark win­ter days.

Today we booked our hotel in Reyk­javik. I’m get­ting bet­ter at being able to spell this with­out mess­ing up! We’ll spend the first three nights there. We arrive Tues­day, June 26th at 6am and can’t check in until 2pm. Then at 3pm that day we have a stand­ing appoint­ment for a civil mar­raige ser­vice at the Magistrate’s office in Reyk­javik. This could be inter­est­ing as Greg and I will no doubt be jet lagged. I’m hop­ing the hotel lets us in early as I’d like to at least have a shower before I become an hon­est woman!

I hope we can do a church cer­e­mony in a remote place instead of or at least in addi­tion to the one in the city. But since we aren’t Lutheran and it’s hard to actu­ally track down a church via the Inter­net or guide­book, I’m think­ing we’ll send the papers in to both the magistrate’s office for a civil ser­vice and the Dean of Reyk­javik for a church ser­vice. Cover all bases!

Maybe we can meet Bjork??

Wrote to the Reverand of Reyk­javik West plead­ing him to give us a bless­ing at least. It would be great to find a church out in the coun­try­side, at least for a photo op. This is, how­ever the land where many still believe in trolls, elves and gob­lins so maybe one of those can be a wit­ness for us? Very Lord of the Rings which suits Greg perfectly.