Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Mel! Applause Hi everyone, my name is Mel. I did not know my face was going to be quite that big. And 11 years ago, tonight, I went on my first date with this guy. It's pretty cute, right? Since then, Chris and I have done a lot together. We moved to California and then to Colorado. Once we moved to Colorado, obviously we had to give Subaru in the super cute dog. We got a check-in, we got a mortgage. One thing we never did was to get married. We're not married, we have no plans to be married. It's something as a couple that we just decided was not for us. For a couple reasons. The biggest one for me, I love the state of Colorado and I definitely think it should be involved in licensing people who want to drive cars. Or run businesses or sell weed. But I just never really saw the point in getting state licensing for my relationship. Plus we're saving a lot of our taxes. But when this comes up, when people find out we've been together for accident-merviers, I hear this all the time. You know you're common-law married, right? Because you've been together for seven years. I've heard this so many times now that I've actually taken a PowerPoint. To explain what common-law marriage is and more importantly what it is not. Living with someone for seven years does not make you common-law married to them. It doesn't make you any kind of married to them. I don't know where this came from, someone 100% made it up. Please stop repeating it. Getting married is not like tripping on a rake. It's not something that you can do on accident. Common-law marriage is a real thing though. And it's something that you can do in the state of Colorado. Colour is actually pretty chill when it comes to marriage laws. There's no waiting period. You don't have to get a blood test. You can do your own marriage ceremony if you want to. You're not required to have like a seat captain or a priest or anything. These tacky, thick nails are legal, totally optional to eat your own. And you can also get common-law married if you would like to. If you want to do this, first thing you have to do is live together. You do have to live together not for any specific period of time, but you do have to live together. The second thing is that you both have to agree that you want to be married to each other. And you have to have a reputation in your community as being a married couple, meaning all your friends have to think that you're married. So if you think about it, you could meet both requirement number two and number three, just by updating your Facebook page. Those are the three requirements. Those are requirements in most states that allow common-law marriage. There's one state that has one additional requirement, and that's a state of Alabama. And they actually require that you consummate your relationship, physically, by doing it. Which is kind of weird, right? Like you start out the night and you're having pre-marital sex, which is generally frowned upon in Alabama. And then by the end of the night, poof, you're on your honeymoon! So these are the other states that allow common-law marriage. I didn't put New Hampshire up there because one of you has to die first and then you can go to court and say that even though you don't have a marriage license, you should still get to have all the other one stuff. But if you do get married in a state that allows common-law marriage, this is the most important thing. You are seriously friggin' married. You are just as married as if you put on big white pucky dress, walk down the aisle, sign the license, did the funky chicken at your reception. It's real marriage. It's not like marriage with training wheels, or marriage light. If you get common-law married, the only way to get unmarried is to either get a divorce or one of you dies. Facebook's Ted is will not cut it. And because you're legally married, what that means is per the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution, thank you, Article One. You're actually married in all 50 states. So if you get common-law married in Colorado, that means you're also married in Washington, in Indiana, in Virginia, and also the territories I checked. So... You guys are nice. Are any of you... So if you're interested in being married, is anyone here engaged? Anyone thinking you're not getting engaged? Anyone just look awkwardly at your date? Well, maybe this is a great option for you. Common-law marriage is really cheap. I mean, you say $30 a loan just on the marriage license in Denver. And you could use that $30 to buy me a drink. So, what do we learn tonight? One, common-law marriage is real marriage. Two, drunken shenanigans in Las Vegas aside, you cannot get married on accident. And three, even though it's my 11-year anniversary, I'm still not married. And you can't make me. Thanks guys.