John and I were married in the Nauvoo Temple on the first day it opened in 2002. I got caught up in some memories of it today while I was writing a letter to the Hancock County Clerk’s office in Carthage, IL, to request copies of our marriage certificate.

When we were preparing to get married, the letter we received from temple officials told us we needed to acquire a marriage license from the county courthouse in Carthage. We got an idea of how small Carthage is when the letter gave no address for the courthouse but directed us to “look for the largest building in the center of town.”

We were a little nervous we wouldn’t find it, but the letter’s directions were exactly on. Carthage is pretty compact (it’s so small that on Google Maps you can’t zoom in close enough to see residential street names–not even when the distance legend is in increments of 2000 feet). The courthouse would have been hard to miss unless we were blind.

Today when I was making calls and filling out paperwork to get copies of our marriage certificate the city’s smallness was reiterated when I saw that the P0 box for the county clerk’s office is PO Box 39 (have you ever seen such a low box number?), and again when I called the courthouse to ask a question. There was no automated menu; I got to talk to a real person right away!

Sometimes smaller is better, don’t you think?