Is 9 months enough time?

[TashaK 1]

Hi, this is my first time posting on this board. My fiance and I are just getting ready to submit our petition and we're also thinking about when the wedding is going to be. Both our of families want to be there, which means his family needs to buy plane tickets to come out, so we're looking at that now before prices start to go up. Is it jumping the gun to assume that 9 months will be long enough to get him in on the visa? In my (totally unbiased ) eyes, our application is quite straight forward (we lived together for a year while he was in the US on a J-1 visa and have the lease plus joint checking account to show proof of meeting/relationship) but I can't help feeling nervous having his family buy plane tickets! But if we go much farther than 9 months it's hitting peak summer holiday time and ticket prices are already about £200 more. We'll be filing through the California office, if that makes a difference? Thanks in advance for any advice (hell, thanks for any criticism too, I'm feeling totally naive and would appreciate if someone tells me, yes, I'm being too optimistic)

[jennareid 20]

General consensus is to not buy tickets until you have the visa in hand. Booking before you've even filed is a very bad idea. There are a ton of factors which could delay even the most straightforward case, it could all go fine until after the interview and you could get stuck in AP with no time frame. Don't book tickets yet.

[amykathleen2005 441]

We had a straightforward case as well and because of a little snafu with the medical it took us a total of 10 months from mailing to having the visa in hand. You never know what is going to happen. I would say wait, you don't want to waste even more money if you have to cancel the date that you planned.

[TashaK 1]

Thanks for the replies. Do most people just go to the courthouse/Vegas as soon as they get the visa and forgo any bigger wedding? I just don't want my future in-laws to be paying ridiculous amounts for last minute tickets to come see us get married, plus I had envisioned something other than a courthouse for our wedding...

[Justine+David 218]

This is what we did:

Filed the I-129F about a year in advance of when we wanted the wedding. Started booking vendors, but made the explicit agreement that they would push the date forward if need be.

Once you get to the Consular level, your timeframe is much quicker, although there it is not without risks. One of our members is a natural-born British woman without need for waivers and still has got caught in extra processing after her interview, which is just over 6 months now I believe. She had no idea this would happen to her and the folks at her interview had told her to expect her visa within a couple of weeks.

My own particular story, my fiance wasn't prompted to pay for the visa, so we contacted the embassy and sent in the payment and it took 5 weeks to get the visa after the interview.

Here is some good news: at the interview, your visa gives you leave to enter of 6 months, and then 90 days to get married. So you could have up to 9 months of advance notice once getting your visa.

My advice is to make sure everything in your package is correct to avoid RFEs, pray if you're a praying person, and read everything you can on this forum about the packet 3/interview/consular level stuff in London since there are quite a few short-cuts to make your time shorter if you're patient enough to read through the forum like I did. You can't control the time length of the USCIS processing level which could take as soon as 2 weeks to more likely 3 months to some people 6+ months.

good luck! and welcome to VJ

[marlea 84]

I will admit that we are jumping the gun a bit with our wedding plans and have set a date. Though having said that, no one from the UK has bought a ticket yet. We will most likely be doing a "courthouse wedding" to make it legal pretty soon after he arrives here, but we will be doing the bigger wedding a few months later. We will then probably do another "civil ceremony" in the UK for his friends and family that can't be here in the US. Most of our guests understand the circumstances and are just fine with us making things legal before the wedding. With the way visa processing can go, it's a ####### shoot, and the entire process is built so that setting official dates and making arrangements is incredibly hard.

Good luck with your visa!

[Nik+Heather 121]

We filed in late January, and started planning the wedding for Mid-October, so about 9 months. Just like Justine and David, I made doubly sure to understand the cancellation/scheduling parts of the contracts, that I could change the date without loosing the deposits. There were a couple of dates on the calendar (luckily we never reached them) where if we hadn't received the visa yet, we would have had to move the wedding out or possibly eat the deposit.

The decision about how and when to get married and when to start planning is the result of many trade offs. For us, having the whole enchilada, the pretty dress, the ceremony and the legal part at the same time, all of our family around us was more important than getting him here a few months earlier, so Nik didn't use the visa until a few months after it was issued.

Another trade off I was unwilling to make was to gamble on the visa timing with other people's money, so we made it clear that although the wedding was "tentatively" planned for Oct 11th, and they should attempt to keep the weekend free, they shouldn't put any money down until we'd settled the visa. We received our visa in the height of tourist season, but had our wedding in a nice little ~$400/rt ticket lul in the fall, which worked out well for all of us!

I also used the timeline function on this site quite a bit when trying to estimate the right timing for the wedding and what to expect from the process. There is a lot to explore, and you can even export your own raw data and look at it yourself if you're a numbers type person. The best way to have a smooth process is to research, research, research, and always be a step ahead. There will be times when it is your turn to respond in the process, and if you're ready to turn it around ASAP your process will go that much more smoothly!

[marlea 84]

Well, I will say that we are really lucky as well that the person who is officiating our wedding is a very good friend, and he is just fine with doing the bare minimum to make it legal before the actual wedding, just signing the papers, saying the I Do's without the vows, so that it will almost feel like we are getting married in two steps. The "legal" part will get the basic part done, and the wedding itself will finish everything off. And considering that in many other parts of the world an in other times in history weddings are often multi-part ceremonies, I like to think we are just being a bit more universal.

[Nik+Heather 121]

Well, I will say that we are really lucky as well that the person who is officiating our wedding is a very good friend, and he is just fine with doing the bare minimum to make it legal before the actual wedding, just signing the papers, saying the I Do's without the vows, so that it will almost feel like we are getting married in two steps. The "legal" part will get the basic part done, and the wedding itself will finish everything off. And considering that in many other parts of the world an in other times in history weddings are often multi-part ceremonies, I like to think we are just being a bit more universal.

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that it's not the right way to do it, it just wasn't right for us....and it's a consideration they will have to make, if it's not right for them, either.

Edited August 17, 2010 by Nik+Heather

[marlea 84]

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that it's not the right way to do it, it just wasn't right for us....

Oh, no, I didn't think that's what you were implying all. I think if you are able to wait and get it all to work out to do it all at once, that's great! But I would rather have him here as soon as possible, as would he. I just wanted to give another view of how a couple could not be quite as traditional but still have a big wedding.

[Rob and Jill 82]

Tasha,

We filed in February and we're assuming after his interview it will take 2 weeks to get here, so we're planning on his arrival in October, roughly 8 months since the process started. It would have been faster, but we had a few paperwork errors.

With that being said, we used the "average" timeline on VJ and for us it was way off...or I would be getting married Saturday!

If a big wedding is what you want, plan it far enough out in advance (even next fall to skip the extra travel expenses), but be aware your fiance won't be able to come VISIT once his Visa is approved. You have to decide what is more important to the two of you! A big wedding and being patient about more time apart, or less time apart and a smaller wedding.

[TashaK 1]

Thanks everyone for all the advice!

Tasha