Step 1. Apply for NSO and Local Registry Copy of Birth and Marriage Certificate


According to DHL I will still need the local registry copy of our Birth and Marriage Certificates, I still cannot understand why will DFA still need this as I already have the NSO copies. Well, since I don't want to go to DFA myself, I went to Marikina City Hall to get a copy of our Marriage Cert.

Thankfully, Marikina City Hall is as efficient as ever. They even don't observe lunch break, however, since our record was endorsed already to NSO, they will just issue a certification and the NSO copy needs to be presented to them, so I head back home to retrieve it, silly me, I should have brought it in the first place.

I immediately came back and in less than 30mins I was able to get the certification at P100 per copy. Great service!

After a couple of days, I decided to go to Quezon City Hall where my and my daughter's birth certificates will be issued. I parked the car in a salon near V.Luna since I'm not familiar on how to get to the City Hall so I took a cab from there, its just a short ride, cost me P70 for fare.

I was able to locate the Civil Registry Office, went to the Window that process birth certificate copies, after listing our names and presenting it to the officer in charge, he went through the computer to check if they have our certificates on file, which I'm confident they have. After squinting into the screen monitor, he called our name again for me to confirm, and presented my ID. He gave me a short slip that says: P160 . I asked again if this is already for 4 copies and he said yes, well, this is a little cheaper, I thought it would be around P100 also. I went to their Treasury Office to pay, the line is quite long but fast moving. I was able to settle it in 15-20mins, however,it was already lunch time by the time I get back to the Local Registry Office. And since I'm in no mood to roam around to look for somewhere I can eat, I just ignore the hunger pangs, until 1 PM. At exactly 1 PM, the window re-opened again, and I was immediately attended, I presented the OR and the Officer told me to go back on Monday. I asked the Officer if there's a way he could give it to me today as I'm willing to wait since I'm not that too keen of going back again on Monday as I have an important meeting. He asked me why I can't wait until Monday, I reasoned to him that I live far and I need to be in the office as I am in a no work-no pay situation (but its not true, since I always get paid in full regardless of how many hours I rendered). And it worked! He told me to wait and he'll check if he can ask somebody to process my documents, after 15minutes, I was handed the certificates, I was really ecstatic, I swear I could give the Officer a hug, but that wouldn't be necessary hehe, so I gave him my sincerest thanks.

I immediately went to SM Marikina as I remembered I saw an DHL outlet their after gulfing a plate of spaghetti to send the documents to DFA for the red ribbon certification. Cost around P1,450 for the 3 sets of docs, after 4 days I was able to receive it back as promised. But the sad part is the Embassy is no longer accepting documents via DHL since their contract is about to expire by July 1. So I have to go to the Embassy by foot, line up and process it myself.

Step 2. Birth and Marriage Certificates Attestation by the Embassy.

My father agreed to accompany me to the Embassy as I'm not familiar with the place. We arrived at 8:30 AM, I immediately signed in myself in the "list". There are 2 list, one for direct and one for agency assisted applicants. I penned my name in the Direct list. And waited until my name was called around 10:30AM, I just came back from a few blocks away to have the red ribbon DFA cert copied, and upon lining up inside the embassy there's an announcement we need to submit 2 copies of  the attached documents and not the DFA cert so I went running back to the courier which took me 15 minutes. I swear my asthma is threatening to take over me, but I have to be strong as I am determined to accomplish something today, and not go home empty handed. Gladly I was able to make it in time, paid P1,050 for all 3 documents and was asked to return on Tuesday to pick up the documents.