Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Apostilled! (huh?)

As promised, here's my post on Apostilles. I had never heard of them before we started researching international adoption. It took me a long time just to figure out how to pronounce the word (and I'm still not sure I've got it right!). To the best of my knowledge, it's pronounced "uh-POS-tle" (don't forget the "t", otherwise you are referring to Jesus' disciples!).

So what are these things anyway?

It's a state seal (in our case, from Virginia) that verifies that the notary who notarized our document is a valid notary in the state of Virginia. We have to have MANY documents notarized, and then we need an apostille for EACH one.

To get the apostille you mail your documents to the Secretary of the Commonwealth office in Richmond and they mail them back to you with the apostilles attached (for a fee, of course). We mailed our first set of nine documents on Thursday, Dec. 30, and received them back with apostilles on Monday, Jan 3. I am VERY impressed with that turn-around time!

Here's a picture of one of our apostilles:
Now that our first packet is apostilled it is ready to be sent to Riley's country! I went to the UPS store this morning to mail them. You will not believe what it cost to mail nine documents with apostilles overseas!

Ready??

$116 !!!!!!

For those of you that are wondering, USPS does NOT deliver mail to where these documents are going, so we had to use another (more expensive) service.

Thank goodness we only have to do this a minimum of two more times. YIKES!

But...our first set of dossier documents is now ON ITS WAY!!!!

5 comments:

Nicki said...

This is exciting!! You're doing such a great job updating this blog, Jess. I love reading all your posts!! :)

Jess said...

Thanks, Nicki! I am having fun with it. Glad to know there are people reading :)

Mommy Grits said...

LOL, LOL..I thought this was me writing my own story this week!! $116...! We have just started out (Sveta's family)and I almost passed out at the UPS store on Monday. So happy to have found your blog!

Kelly said...

I completely understand about this cost. When I went to mail off our CSPs and POAs and the lady told it would be 118.15, my mouth dropped. I was corrected by my homestudy worker that apostille is pronounced (appa still) I was also saying it as you have described. I am assuming she is correct as that is how I pronounced it when I went to the Sec. of States office asking for them. :)

Jess said...

Kelly, thanks for the pronunciation correction! "Appa-still"...never would have figured that out on my own :)