With less than four months left until the wedding day Cameron and I are gearing up for deadlines and all the other parts to a wedding besides the wedding day: the marriage part. We have been researching how to obtain a marriage license, how to help our friend apply to officiate our wedding thanks to Massachusetts allowing a "common person" a one-day officiant license, and then what to do after the wedding with the licenses to make the whole day turn into a marriage certificate. It's not as hard as it sounds, but since we are the first people in our friend group to go through this (in the 21st century)  the Internet has been a great help.

Of course every state has its own guidelines and regulations, but thankfully Massachusetts is pretty low-key with their requirements.
Some but not all of them are:

• Be older than 18 √
• Not be related (yet in MA you can marry your cousin?!?!?) √
• Not be married to someone else √

Cameron and I only have to worry about getting paperwork in on time, which means getting the marriage license within 60 days of the marriage, the one-day officiant license around six weeks prior to the wedding day, and sending the paperwork off to Boston to get the certificate. Piece of cake (or pie as we will be having wedding pie). Before all of this starts to come into action Cameron and I both need to read into what it really means to be married with regards to my name chaining (EEK!), taxes, and all other aspects of our lives that will be affected. Any words of wisdom from recent married folk? Let me know in the comments below.