Rethinking how I find records

 It has been phun getting documents ready and in so we can get a residence permit. We have our non-resident card - which all non-residents of Ghana need to have. I heard through the grapevine that those who drive across the border do not need those cards. So I asked if it applied only to people flying in. The man from travel wasn't sure but thought that was likely.  Interesting. NOT, that I am going to drive across another country to get here. It's just interesting.

So, on to the tale of why I'm rethinking how I find records. We need our marriage certificate as one of the documents to get a residence permit. We easily found all the rest as we had them assembled. For some reason the marriage certificate wasn't in our luggage (or it will arrive in the shipment - or it's packed away in storage somewhere). The bottom line is we have no idea where it is. I thought I'd jump online and look through the Utah records and locate it easily. 

Every rabbit hole I went down did not give me the results I was looking for. After a fruitless search I decided to look on my Family Search tree and see if MAYBE I attached my certificate there. No, but they did have a hint that a marriage record could be found in United States Western States Marriage Index. When I found the record I notice that the date of my marriage listed was on the 11, not the 21st. So everywhere I had previously looked was empty - because the facts I put in, I KNEW what date (who, where, when) I was married and expected the records to show that.  Was it a clerical error, the date we got our license, or script that looked like something else? Who knows. 

That brings up an interesting point that records I have been looking for, for some of my relatives, should be more general info instead of specific, in case they are in a slightly different place than I expect....hummmm.

Hurry up and wait syndrome of getting things done in a bureaucracy.