Originally posted by dcarson:
If you sign at the rehearsal and someone gets cold feet at the last minute doesn't that mean that legally they are still married even if they don't have the church ceremony?
I see a story there, probably involving Lucy.
I was married in California. I'm pretty sure my then-fiance and I signed the license when we applied for it. It was the officiator and two witnesses signing it after the ceremony that made the marriage legal. Then we had to file the signed license. The certificate we ended up with was a copy of the signed form on official paper. There's no "original" per se, and you can request (for a fee) as many copies of the license as you want.
As far as timing goes, we got the license immediately, but there was a certain time frame in which it was valid. I think it was valid from ten days after the issue date until a month later.
