Wanna tie the knot? Expect to wait eight weeks in Santa Clara County for a marriage license or ceremony

When Cathy Jamieson wanted to get married, she took the usual route by submitting an application for a marriage license to the Santa Clara County Clerk-Recorder. It was late July, and after six days of waiting, she finally got a response.

It would take eight weeks to get the license, the office told her, so if she needed it sooner she could either go to another county or try calling a list of specialized public notaries.

“It almost seems they don’t understand the importance of weddings,” Jamieson said. “It was so stressful.”

The clerk’s office in Santa Clara County, which also handles death certificates and fictitious business names, is reporting extended wait times of eight weeks to get a virtual marriage license appointment or ceremony conducted, assistant county clerk Louis Chiaramonte acknowledged. For that, he blames COVID-19.

Before the pandemic, all marriage services were done in person.

While other Bay Area counties are not reporting delays as long as Santa Clara County’s, some still have longer wait times than usual for a license or ceremony.

In Alameda County, the wait time for a virtual or in-person marriage service is four to six weeks, while it takes three weeks for an online license application to be completed, according to Clerk staffer Ming Peng. However, walk-ins for a license are available for same-day service.

In San Mateo County, the next available in-person ceremony slot is Dec. 13. The next in-person license appointment is Nov. 10, though walk-ins are available, but are handled after those with a reservation. Virtual appointments are approved on a case-by-case basis.

The Contra Costa County Clerk’s office is not accepting walk-in appointments at all. As of Oct. 22, waits for both licenses and ceremonies are about two weeks.

Jamieson and her wife — who had already been wedded in a ceremony in 2011 before same-sex marriage became legal — chose the notary option not only because they were in a time crunch but also because the notary hands out confidential marriage licenses. The two tied the knot for a second time on Oct. 1, a full 10 years after their wedding, though this time their license was official.

San Jose resident Jim Giblin found himself in the same quandary, facing similar options. In the end, he chose to drive roughly two hours on Thursday to Calaveras County to get a marriage license because he preferred a public marriage license instead of a confidential one. In Calaveras, Giblin said, he was “in and out” for a grand total of nine minutes.

“Some people may not be able to take a day off and go to another county to get a license,” said Giblin, who will be marrying his fiancée in mid-November.

Chiaramonte said even though a “majority” of those in the Santa Clara County office are back working on-site now, a fifth of the 70-person staff are deployed as disaster service workers for the county’s pandemic response efforts. The office is currently handling 17 marriages a day, he said, in addition to other duties.

He said a backlog occurred when an executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom in April 2020 allowing for online marriage license appointments and ceremonies expired on Sept. 30. A week later, the governor signed AB 583, which allows online services until 2024. Chiaramonte said no virtual duties could be done during the week-long gap, and although people were told they could come into the office during that period, most chose not to.

“They felt like it was a disadvantage to come in, they’d prefer to do it on video,” he said.

“There’s been a number of challenges that we’ve faced during the whole shelter-in-place time,” he said, adding that his office is trying to ramp up services in the next couple of weeks. “We’re making sure that we can try to open up more appointment slots.”

In addition to pointing people to other counties and public notaries, Chiaramonte said folks can always call the clerk’s office and explain an extenuating circumstance.

“If something frees up and if someone needs to be married sooner, then if we know that, we start looking for spots in the schedule,” he said. “We may also redeploy resources in the office to make an extra slot.”

While the county is only providing virtual marriage services at the moment, Chiaramonte said walk-in appointments are available for “stand-by” customers who can show up when there is a cancellation or no-show.

But for Giblin, it’s not enough.

“It shouldn’t be that hard,” Giblin said. “This is just an inefficiency.”