Photo courtesy of Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Of all the places to be on Valentine’s Day, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) was not on my list. And yet, here I sit.
Travel Planning Takes Time
Travel requires a lot of planning. If you are going out of the country, you’ll need official documents like a passport and possibly, a visa. These documents take time to process.
Passports for adults are valid for 10 years; children’s passports expire sooner. If your passport expires, you need to start the application process all over again.
One of the documents required is a birth certificate with a raised seal to prove authenticity. If your birth certificate doesn’t have this, it can cause problems.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
When Expedited Passports Don’t Arrive
More than a decade ago, eveyone in our family got passports for a ski trip to Canada. We ordered them three months in advance and paid the expedited fees.
Everyone else’s passport in our family arrived in two weeks My passport was held up for two months – because it had a different seal. Four days before my trip, it still had not arrived and I was panicked I wouldn’t be able to leave the country. I spent hours every night that week trying to get a live operator at the State Department on their telephone hotline,
I finally got through to an operator 48 hours before my trip. She told me to go down to the old Passport Office in Washington, DC and apply for same day service. After waiting with the crowds for seven hours, I did get my passport.
The morning of our trip as we were waiting for the a taxi to take us to the airport, a second passport arrived by FedEx. Some employee had finally processed my first application. I got a letter from the US State Department two weeks later asking me to return one of them. It eventually expired.
Passport Process Today
Eleven years later, I needed my passport again to travel to Paris. Of course, it was a year out of date. This time I decided to get a new birth certificate.
After all these years, the process is easier. Instead of ordering from the Department of Vital Records in the state I was born and waiting weeks, I can get it closer to home and very quickly. Now there is a national registry. In Virginia, a birth certificate can be ordered through the local DMV.
And that’s where I am once again, at the DMV. Only this time, I’m getting my son’s birth certificate so he can get a new passport for a study abroad program. I’ll be driving down this afternoon to meet him for a Valentine’s Day lunch and trip to the passport office in his college town. Although he doesn’t leave until this summer, we’ve all learned the hard way to plan way ahead.
What You Need to Know about Passports and Visas
If you are traveling abroad, visit the new resources section of my site to learn more about the process of getting a passport and visa. Not every country requires a visa, so you can search your destination to find out if it’s needed.
Happy Valentine’s Day and happy travel planning!
