I'm writing this review to warn other couples. We chose to have a quick marriage ceremony done at the town court. We were not expecting anything fancy or complicated, just a civil ceremony with a small group of close friends and family follow...ed by lunch at a local restaurant.
We made an appointment a month before our wedding when we got our marriage license. The town clerk, Linda Laird, was to do the ceremony at noon on a Friday. We planned to arrive there at 11:45. The court is only a few minutes from my house and we expected the ceremony to take no more than ten minutes. On the way there, a family member got lost (due to the parkway being closed) and we had to make a slight detour to help her get there. We pulled arrived at exactly 12:02pm, literally two minutes late, and were told that it wasn't happening. We had two friends who had arrived at the court earlier and who were there when the clerk walked out at noon. They tried to convince her to wait for us since at that point we were right around the corner, but she refused, saying "Twelve o'clock means twelve o'clock." We were fortunate enough that Mount Vernon was able to perform the ceremony last minute, but it almost didn't happen. I cannot believe how poorly we were treated when all we were asking for was a 5 minute ceremony which we had arranged weeks in advance. If she was so busy that performing our ceremony literally two minutes late would have thrown off her entire schedule (on a Friday afternoon…) she should not have offered to do the ceremony in the first place. All we wanted was something simple and they managed to make a complete disaster out of it. If you're looking to do a civil ceremony and live in this area, stay away from Eastchester!
