Why can't anything be simple?

You'd think that for two people who love each other so much that they want to get it officially recognized, it would be easy.

However, I've learned over the last few months that it's not.

When I proposed to Ellen, I thought it'd be a fairly straightforward procedure. You know, we'd go to an office, sign a few bits of paper, maybe hand over some money - and it'd be done.

How naive I was.

No, there's a great deal more to it than that.

First, I had to get what's called a "Single's Certificate", or "A Certificate of No Record of Marriage" from South Australia. This is to show that I've never been married, and it was relatively easy to get one.

Relatively, in that all I had to do was send a notified copy of my passport, Foreign Expert's Certificate, a letter stating my address in both English and Chinese, and a fairly hefty check

That took a few weeks to organize.

So, I thought I was on the home stretch. I asked Ellen to ring the Marriage Bureau in Tianjin, and see if they could book us a time to come and register.

Like a fool, I thought this was going to be easy - but it wasn't.

It seems that my "Single's Certificate" from the Government of South Australia lacks credibility here, as it fails to have a big red seal on it. Documents in Australia very rarely, if ever, have seals in red ink on them, as it's not a part of our way of doing business. Even more rare would be to see one that has a seal on it in Chinese.

Dejected, I turned back to the website of the Australian Embassy in Beijing. It said that, for a fee, they could put a nice red stamp on my piece of paper, and make it more acceptable to the Marriage Bureau.

Again, I handed the phone to Ellen, to get her to ask the Marriage Bureau if that was what they wanted.

"No."

A simple enough answer, and so I turned back to the Embassy's website again. For a rather large fee, they would swap my "Single's Certificate" for a "Certificate of No Impediment To Marriage", a formal document in both Chinese and English.

Would this please the Marriage Bureau?

"Yes."

At last, we were getting somewhere, and a frantic dash to the Australian Embassy in Beijing was undertaken. We jumped on a train, took a taxi ride to the embassy, and I rather grudgingly parted with a large chunk of my monthly take-home salary, in exchange for the all-important piece of paper.

Is the process over yet?

Unfortunately, Ellen and I haven't had time to register at the Marriage Bureau yet.

So, if you're thinking of asking your loved one to marry you - don't rush into it.

Make sure you've got all the bits of paper you need, and enough money to buy the ones you haven't.

I'm not sure if the same sort of processes go on outside of China - I've never been married before - but I'm determined that this is the first, and last, time I'll ever get married.

It's Ellen forever. I swear it!