Make sure it is the right county! (My parents' marriage license is shifty. From county A, but signed by judge from county B and there's something iffy about the dates it was signed on. But it's been 45 years, I think they're legit by now.)

Let me know if they still make you swear you don't have syphilis. (I swear to god, mine did. Hamilton County, 1998.)

We did ours in the wrong colored ink. They have to be in black ink in Louisiana, we used the blue pen the clerk gave us, our rabbi traced over everything in black before he signed.

Hey, what's the blood test supposed to be for, anyway? They aren't checking for syphilis, are they? We didn't have to do one, my sister and her husband did.

I am going crazy with my email dinging at me. WebAssign, the online homework system we use, is having server problems. Students can sometimes log on to do their homework, but sometimes not. I sent an email to all my students, telling them that I know what's going on, and that I'll change the due dates on the homework if I need to. Even so, they all keep emailing me to let me know that each one of them is having problems logging on. I'm getting a new email every five minutes or so.

(OK, just looked at the time stamps, and it's not quite every five minutes. It's still annoying. And the email from the president of WebAssign says that the problem will be corrected "within a week," which is totally not a time frame I can work with.)

-t, I think the blood test is to make sure your blood Rh types are compatible so when you have babies you don't die. Something like that. According to my mom.

Let me know if they still make you swear you don't have syphilis. (I swear to god, mine did. Hamilton County, 1998.)

If they ask that, I'm going to angrily turn to Tim, point, and say, "How does THIS GUY know you have syphilis?!? 'Working late,' my ass!"

Hey, what's the blood test supposed to be for, anyway?

I think only a few states even still require a blood test (Ohio doesn't), but it is for some STIs, as well as sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs.

Massachusetts got rid of the blood test sometime in the past ten years.

Do they not let you get married if you're results aren't right, whatever they are testing? That's fucked up.

Come to think of it, I don't think my sister's marriage license was from the county where they held the ceremony. But they had a Unitarian minister to sign it, and she might have been from the same county as the paperwork.

Eta; and now that I am looking for the, there don't seem to be any states that really require blood tests. The ones that have it listed as a requirement either recently got rid of it or you can sign a waiver and not do it. So I guess that's moot. But I don't really understand it historically, either.

And the Straight Dope says it was basically for the syph. [link]

So, not like getting your vision checked when you get a driver's license, more like free blood pressure monitoring when you pick up a prescription?