Apostille collection

After my trip to the Philly consulate, I set about obtaining all the apostilles for the documents. An apostille is an international legalization that is attached to a document. The secretary of state from the state in which the document comes from issues the apostille. Luckily for me, most of the documents I had collected all came from NJ. I could've sent these documents to NJ and then waited for them to attach the apostilles. Instead, I had my dad go to the secretary of state office, which is located close to where he lives and had him get them done while he waited. I did the same for my birth certificate in MA.

Once we had all the apostilles, we sent the complete package of documents to the Philly consulate. The next step for them was to translate the documents and then send them to the Commune di Manoppello (town hall of Manoppello, Italy) where vital records are stored. There, they will record each of the documents and then send a reply back to the consulate in Philly confirming that they received the documents and that they were recorded.

Now, although all the documents had been sent to Italy, it was all for my dad's application. I still needed to apply. However, I had to wait until the Philly consulate received a written reply back from Manoppello, then I could take that written reply and give it to the consulate here in Boston. That would be proof that my dad was now an Italian citizen and then the Boston consulate could go ahead with my application.

So, at this point, it was June 04 and all I could do was wait for a reply from the Commune di Manoppello....