In a quite shocking revelation, a couple who had been together for six years recently discovered that they were never legally married, six years after their wedding ceremony.
Stand-up comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, 34, from Los Angeles, California, and her husband Ryan Harper Gray had a beautiful wedding ceremony in June 2017 in front of 180 family and friends. They exchanged vows, and celebrated their love.
However, six years later, when they tried to get Ryan added to Atsuko’s health insurance, they were asked for proof of their marriage. Upon realizing that they couldn’t find the marriage certificate, they requested a copy from the City of Los Angeles, only to find out that their paperwork was never filed.
“We were asked for proof that we were married, specifically, our marriage certificate,” she told Insider.
“We thought we’d had one at some point, but we’re not very good at paperwork, and when we went to look for it, we couldn’t find one anywhere in the house.
“So we sent off a request to the City of Los Angeles for a copy of our marriage certificate, then set off for a holiday in Tokyo, and Taipei, Taiwan, thinking the marriage certificate would be in our mailbox when we returned. It wasn’t.
“My husband called the city, and when he finally got through, it told him that we weren’t legally married.
“There was no record of us being married. Though we had a wedding in 2017 with 180 of our closest friends and family, the paperwork had never been filed.”
After spending some time processing the news, the couple headed to the courthouse to get married for a second time. Atsuko, who is a comedian, said that they couldn’t help but laugh about the situation
“It was starting to sink in that we hadn’t been married this whole time, For the past six years, we’d basically just been dating, like boyfriend and girlfriend. That’s when we started laughing. After all, I’m a comedian. You couldn’t write this stuff.” She added.
When they married in 2017, their mutual friend Clayton officiated the wedding. They now believe he was the one who accidentally caused the mishap, since it was ‘his job to file the paperwork.
The couple was able to have their marriage certificate backdated to 2017 after paying a fee of $200 and bringing two witnesses to prove that their wedding had indeed happened.
