Thread by @asymmetricinfo

Also, true story: when we bought our house in 2010, banks were understandably tightening up on those documentation requirements. They were still, hilariously, willing to lend us approximately twice what I was willing to borrow, but you know, really well documented.

https://twitter.com/asymmetricinfo/status/1440433469633404928

Anyhoo, we'd just gotten married. And part of our downpayment came from money that people had--much to my surprise!--given us in lieu of gifts.

The bank wanted proof that we were really married, and had just had a wedding. Which, fair.

(If you've never bought a house: banks want you to have a certain amount of $$$ in bank to cover mortgage + expenses following your purchase. They want you to actually have that money, not just borrow it from Mom for a few weeks to pad the account. Hence: proof, please!)

So anyway, we tell them "Here is our marriage license. You will notice the date, corresponding with the date upon which the money was deposited in our account, minus two weeks honeymoon".

Bank's like "Fine, you got married, that doesn't tell us you had a wedding."

So we provide them with assorted documentation of said wedding. Our wedding invitation, for example.

Bank says "I'm sorry, you could have had this printed up, we need actual proof that you got married and had a wedding."

One part of me is mildly outraged at being accused of an elaborate con. Another part of me is mildly pleased that they think I am capable of pulling off such an elaborate con. A third part of me just finds this all hilarious.

"What," I ask them, "would constitute such proof?"

"A wedding announcement," they say.

Now, my little chickadees, we must take a little stroll even deeper into the past, to before our wedding, when we considered whether to place a wedding announcement in my hometown paper, which is, unfortunately, the New York Times.

I mean, not that I am displeased that I grew up on the New York Times; it is easily the second-best general interest newspaper going.

But having a wedding announcement in the New York Times marks you out as a certain sort of person. Which is to say, the kind of person who applies to have a wedding announcement in the New York Times.

That's right, my children: you have to apply.

I mean, maybe if you are Beyonce, they come and beg you to have a wedding announcement in the Times, for all I know. But the proles have to submit an application, and then there is an interview. And then they will decide if you're worthy.

This seems like a very weird thing to do. I mean, at the end of the day, the people who cared that Megan McArdle was marrying Peter Suderman were likely to be at the wedding, or following it on Twitter. Why would I apply to have it written up for people who barely know us?

The answer, my friends, is that a Certain Relative Who Will Remain Nameless wanted us to have a wedding announcement in the New York Times.

For those of you who haven't gotten married, wedding planning involves doing a lot of things that seem dubious to you in order to placate a Certain Relative Who Will Remain Nameless.

Plural.

Remind me some day to tell you all about another Certain Relative Who Will Remain Nameless and the exponential growth curve this person induced in our canape costs.

So we fill out the form on the website. And have the interview. And are informed by a cheerful woman at the other end that our magazine jobs give us a "very good chance" of being selected for the honor of announcing our nuptials to a million strangers.

This also involved other embarrassments, like snapping the photo on the street near my then-fiance's office because we're also not the kind of people who sit for professional-quality engagement photos. Or indeed, do our hair before heading to the street outside fiance's office.

Not my best look. Anyhoo, we did run an announcement, with the not-great photo of me (but hubby looking splendid, as usual). And you know, thank you Certain Relative Who Shall Remain Nameless, because it shut the bank right the heck up about whether we'd really had a wedding.

Which at the end of the day is odd, because it's not like they sent an investigative reporter. I told them there would be a wedding at the Cosmos Club. They printed it. It's not like they sent an investigative team to make sure.

The moral of the story is: Banks are weird about mortgage documents. Also, don't get too frustrated when that Certain Relative Who Shall Remain Nameless starts asking for stuff you weren't planning on. Years later, you may be grateful they did.