Being Authentic

Well, the other day I emailed scans of much of our dossier paperwork to our family coordinator. Most everything looked good but in her response she listed that many of our documents needed to be authenticated by the states in which they came from. Having a document authenticated involves sending it to the secretary of state along with the appropriate fee (and sometimes a self-addressed stamped envelope) and having them certify that either the notary or other state official who has signed the document is in good standing with the state. We knew that we would need to do this but we failed to understand that the authentication had to be done in the state the document came from. We thought that we simply took all of our documents to the secretary of state in North Carolina when we got it all together and that they would do the authentications. Being that this isn't the case we had to send documents to Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, and Virginia at a total cost of $80.00. When we get our I-171 (approval from immigration) from USCIS (which is immigration services) we then take all of our other paperwork to be authenticated at the secretary of state in North Carolina but that should be a while before we get to that point.

Have I mentioned how much fun paperwork is?