Three years and one day ago, Jeff and I went to a jewelry store to buy rings. My choice was not difficult, because I needed a simple gold band to go with my engagement ring, which is rather unusual and wouldn't look good next to anything elaborate. Jeff's choice was not difficult either, because he needed a ring—you know, just a ring—and out of the half dozen the woman behind the counter chose to show him, there was only one that both fit and was suitably, you know, just-a-ring-like.

"Do you want to get it engraved?" the woman asked, and yes, he did. He wanted the wedding date etched on the inside of the band. What date, she wanted to know.

"July 14, 2000," Jeff answered, and the woman's eyes popped a little.

"That's tomorrow!" she exclaimed.

"Right," he agreed. Both of us laughed, and we explained that we were going to be married in a civil ceremony, and we were planning to go to the courthouse the next afternoon. Early, because the website said Fridays were big marrying days at the courthouse, and if you got to the courthouse too late on a big marrying day, it would still be a big marrying day—just not yours.

"Well, you have to get there early, now," the woman behind the counter said as she handed back the newly engraved ring a few minutes later. "Can't have the ring be wrong!"

The manifest trueness of this remark could lead to nothing but paranoia. I checked the Orange County website at least three times that night. I knew I had read the page that said the state of California didn't require blood tests anymore, but I couldn't seem to find the other part of the site, the one that would inform me that blood tests would be mandatory just for five foot-tall blondes, or for men with red hair, or for anyone who lived in Huntington Beach but once had chickenpox in Texas. Ultimately, I decided that I couldn't find the page with those caveats because it didn't exist, though I remained uneasy. After all, this is the OC government we were talking about.

The morning after we bought our rings, I was awoken by helicopters. The sound of helicopters wasn't out of place in that neighborhood, but it was awfully early for the police to be flying around just to advertise the fact that they existed, and the Fuzz didn't normally buzz so low or for so long. After trying to ignore the noise for nearly a half hour, I gave up and pulled on a pair of jeans. I then wandered outside to investigate. The helicopters held news crews, not officers of the law, and people with cameras were filming some sort of hullabaloo down the street. I wasn't the only one who had come to see what was happening, and as I stood a few feet back from the rest of my curious neighbors, a barefoot woman with mussed hair and a spandex shirt caught my eye.

"It was so LOUD!" she complained, not unloudly. "It woke me up! I was disoriented at first, and I thought, 'Oh no, they're coming for my husband again!'"

I tried not to choke, and I put on my best poker face. My best poker face is not particularly good, but I suspected she wouldn't notice.

"Me too," I returned, just for the hell of it. For effect, I threw in a we're-all-in-this-together-kid nod. The chatty stranger in the spandex shirt, encouraged, continued to talk.

"... so, I heard all the racket, and I went to shake my husband and tell him, 'Hey, baby, get up! You've got to jump out the window!' But then, I remembered, 'Oh yeah! My husband's already in jail!'"

I actually did choke at this one, but I pretended I was just coughing, and pointed by way of explanation at the cigarette I was holding.

"Mine is at home," I told her once I could manage speech. "But we're going to the courthouse later."

And so we did. We bought flowers and then drove to the courthouse, where it was a big marrying day, just like the website said it would be. After confirming that we had arrived early enough to ensure that the ring wouldn't be wrong, we filled out some paperwork and sat down to look at the other people who had gathered in the waiting room. Some were there just for marriage licenses. Others, like us, were there to get a license and marry right away. Some people wore jeans. Some looked like they were on their way to (or from) work. One woman wore a formal wedding gown with lacy sleeves; she kept grinning at her fiancé as she tried to squeeze the endless layers of her skirt into a chair that wasn't meant to accommodate such sartorial complexity. Me, I wore a sundress and sandals, and I carried my flowers, and it wasn't long before we exited the building and made our way down the sidewalk towards the parking garage.

As we walked, we heard someone on the street call to someone else. Turning our heads to find the owner of the voice, we realized the "someone else" was us. A woman had slowed down her car and rolled down her window so she could speak to us.

"Hey! Did you just get married?" she asked excitedly.

"Yeah!" we told her, holding up our hands to display rings she no doubt couldn't see.

"Congratulations!!!" she shouted. We thanked her as she honked a few times and drove away, waving at us in her rearview mirror. We couldn't stop smiling at her, even after she was gone.