Because Abel Stearns was not born a Mexican citizen, he had to petition the Los Angeles civil government to marry Bandini. He also had to petition the Catholic authorities, which was standard procedure for the time; the Church considered all prospective Catholic marriages to ensure that the parties' ages were appropriate, that they were not already married to others, whether their births were legitimate, and, chiefly, whether the union would be incestuous. While the gap in their ages was substantial, at 29 years (and Stearns himself claimed to authorities to be 40 rather than 43, perhaps to make the gap smaller), it was relatively common at this time for very young "californias" to marry significantly older Euro-American men. The Catholic Church had determined 11 to be the age below which a girl could not get married, so Bandini was above that standard.