Only three months to plan a wedding??

[jrmejia 31]

technically, you would have about nine months to plan for it. you actually have six months to use the the visa and the ninety days only starts at your point of entry. so i guess if you wanted longer to plan it you could

Very well said, it is actually about 9 months like you stated.

[ABandIG 2]

Yes indeed, technically you have 9 months. But if you want to plan the wedding together, I'd say go for a civil marriage so that you will fulfill the visa purpose, and then plan a wedding for a few months later, where you can have a big reception and whatever you want. It's just a suggestion, this is what we're planning on doing. Good luck!

[payxibka 10,045]

As I said before, we want to plan it together. We do not want to plan our wedding separate from one another, meaning we don't want to plan the wedding in separate countries from one another.

Is there someone that can just answer my question?

All of the responses are much appreciated, but I need someone who can give me a definitive answer...

I answered it in post #2, what is the issue?

[James And Oksana 19]

Our Fiance visa has been approved and we will soon be going in for the interview process. We want to plan our wedding together in the US but there is no way in hell we could do it in three months.

What constitutes a "marriage" in order to apply for a change of status to become a permanent resident?

We want to have more time together to plan our ceremony... I mean typically planning for a wedding take 6 months or more... so... help please!

A legal marriage is one in which a person gets a license in the state in which they reside, and then are married by an official that is licensed to do so. What my fiancee and I plan on doing is getting married at the courthouse soon after she arrives, apply for a marriage license and have a judge to marry us, and plan a wedding ceremony for later. This also allows for the adjustment of status paperwork to be submitted as when a judge marries you, at that point you are legally married. At the ceremony it will not be considered a legal marriage, and is more for the memories and such. Of course pictures of such a ceremony could be useful if interviewed for adjustment of status, but can easily be explained why they were separate, and many people do this for the very reason 90 days is insanely small time to coordinate a wedding.

[C Med 14]

Obtaining a marriage license does not equal a valid marriage. A marriage license gives you license (hence the term) to be married in whichever way you wish (civil vs. religious ceremony, etc.). The license is only valid for 30 days (or maybe 60?) and you must be legally married before the license expires. Depending on what kind of ceremony you want to have, you may be able to plan your wedding in three months. Religious ceremonies are harder to plan in just 90 days.

Personally, I was very disappointed when I met with my priest to discuss our options. He advised us to be married civilly first, as the Catholic church has several requirements that must be met prior to the wedding ceremony. Three months just isn't enough time to meet all of those requirements. As disappointed as I initially was to hear that, I then realized that it doesn't really matter. If my sweetheart and I get to be together then it doesn't matter in what way we get married, as long as we're together. That's really what this is all about. Best of luck.

[texas-gal 3]

My fiance and I are planning a church wedding through Skype. I know there's someone else who's made a blog about how she did it. Let me know if you'd like any info on websites if you decide to start planning a ceremony for your initial wedding.

[Harsh_77 718]

I just want to know the following:

What constitutes a marriage to adjust the status of my foreign fiance?

A. Registering our marriage with the state

or

B. Actually having a ceremony, exchanging vowels, etc.

We just want to adjust her status so we can have more time together to plan for the wedding. A week, hell even three months is not long enough to plan a wedding together. We've been a couple for a long time, so we want it to be a special memory...not a hurried, courthouse marriage memory.

Ok answer to your question is YES you can get married in court and that is acceptable.

You can do the ceremony whenever you want thats fine.

The only thing you need to take care is wherever you are required to put your marriage date, it would be the date you got married in court and not when you had ceremony.

[Maleman 5]

There are some great posts concerning this topic here within. In summary, your goal is to have a “certified marriage license” from any of the 50 U.S. states, if you applied for a K-1 visa. Based upon USCIS policy, you are required to have finalized such within the (90) day period. This (90) days starts once your I-94 is stamped at your POE. With this being said, you can then have a marriage “ceremony” of your choice at anytime. It would be most advantageous to have the ceremony evidence, pictures, etc., before you have an AOS interview. Personally, it would have seemed to me that you could have been planning some of the wedding particulars prior to getting your K-1 visa. Nevertheless, your goal is to have a U.S. state certified marriage license within your (90) day period. I dare say in almost every instance, a certified marriage means it will be filled in your states courthouse. Great advice was given within this post when they recommended hand carrying your license to the courthouse after all required signatures have been applied. We carried ours and had it certified immediately. This link should help you in acquiring a license within the any of the 50 states, and explains the requirements as to what authorized state official can sign off on the license on a per state basis

Link: http://www.ehow.com/how_4922732_obtain-certified-marriage-license.html

.

[Messybrownhair 251]

It certainly is possible, if there's a will there's a way. We planned a catholic and military wedding with a nice reception for about 100 guests with plenty time to spare. In this day and age, you can book anything online, the reception, church, dj, photographer.. and in lieu of Invitations you could have a wedding website. As long as you book the church and reception area in advance, everything else can be done in 3 months. Or hire a wedding planner, that's their job and they can make it happen. Sites like the knot and wedding wire already list all the vendors in an area so you don't even have to look for them.

[A and T 82]

Get married at the court house legally, then do whatever you like for a ceremony later on

[Udella&Wiz 325]

Right - if it's important to you to be together and see the venues etc then get married at the courthouse soon after you're fiance arrives. That satisfies what is required to validate your K1 - you're married legally within the US.

This will also be handy because now you can start the AOS process which gives her EAD, AP and eventually the 2 yr greencard.

There are many of us who have gone this route - have a court wedding to get the AOS ball rolling and then have a 2nd wedding - a religious ceremeony later because we wanted something fancier and more elaborate which we could invite family to.

You could even plan the religious ceremony to be back in her home country...once she has AP she can travel....this has been done many times as well

Make sense?

PS - depending on how often the fiance has visited the US - you truly can plan a wedding. My husband and I haggled over details for the entire K1 process I visited him enough also that we could plan things no problem and frankly we talked every single evening for about 6 hrs so we had plenty of time,

[Matt & Bing 56]

We had a full Catholic wedding mass, reception for 50 people with live band etc. all planned within the 90 days. Obviously, you have to do a lot of the "planning" ahead of time and confirm the actual date once the visa is approved. Our church worked with us considering the special circumstances but all went well. It can be done.

[Mary and Enrique 8]

Just one more data point for your research:

Our overall situation is a little different from yours but similar in that my husband and I decided we wanted to get married while he was here, about 3 months before his visa expired. We could have rushed and tried to make a wedding happen (AND file AOS, yeesh - that alone took us 2 months) before he fell out of status, but we had personal/family reasons for feeling it was not appropriate to be having a wedding at that time, and as you've observed, it can be difficult to plan a wedding (even a pretty humble one like ours) in 3 months. So we ran to the courthouse and got married on my lunch hour, keeping everything very utilitarian for paranoia that if we celebrated too much, we wouldn't see the point in spending time/money to have a wedding down the road. We took those months instead to join our lives - bank accounts, etc, and file AOS. We were approved without any trouble, at which point we breathed a huge sigh of relief and started talking about how we wanted to celebrate our marriage on our own timeline.

Two years later, we are one month (to the day!) from our wedding, and everything is exactly how we wanted it to be -- E has his green card and we've had a chance to make several trips to visit his family in Honduras, and my family knows him well and loves him for the wonderful man and husband he is. Everyone is going to be able to celebrate with each other without hushed speculation about E's motives in marrying me or what would happen if his green card petition isn't successful. In our case, it was absolutely the right decision, one that is letting our families be more involved in our lives and share in our joy rather than rush to cross the country/globe in order to support us in a union they know little about. And although I thought the idea that somehow our wedding isn't as legitimate because we're already married was going to be a bit of a buzzkill, it has actually (weirdly) made things better, I think, for lots of reasons. We've been living as a married couple for two years, after all, and we haven't had any real problems yet -- so if nothing else, at least people know that we aren't going to freak out about combining finances and everything is going to fall apart before the catering bill is even paid. I like to joke that our marriage is like a pregnancy -- you don't let yourself get too excited about it until your second trimester, ha ha.

Anyhow, the point is -- what we did isn't for everyone, but it can be done and we have no regrets. It's a little awkward to be married and be planning a wedding, I won't lie about that, but lots of people on these forums have done it. Some even say that they only celebrate the anniversary of their wedding because that's what feels most "real" to them. That has not been the case for us (although ask me again after the wedding), but I have no problem celebrating two anniversaries for the rest of our lives, ha ha. It's ok to distinguish between making a civil commitment (being financially responsible for each other, paying taxes together, functioning as a household/family in the eyes of the law) and making a commitment to each other, your families, and your God to love each other. They're both big life changes, and I think it's totally ok to honor those commitments on separate days if that's what you decide is best for you.

[MatthewNCarolina 73]

As I said before, we want to plan it together. We do not want to plan our wedding separate from one another, meaning we don't want to plan the wedding in separate countries from one another.

Is there someone that can just answer my question?

All of the responses are much appreciated, but I need someone who can give me a definitive answer...

Man, it's SIMPLE. When you applied for the visa, you have to read the rules.. and one of them is.. when your fianceé first enter the U.S, you'll have 3 months to marry. If it's a marriage certificate or a huge ceremony (like it seems that's what you want), it doesn't matter for them.. you HAVE TO GET MARRIED and show them your certificate (then do whatever you have to, for the rest of the visa process).

So, if you don't want to do that separated, start planning NOW, because of being apart. etc... I'm sorry but the only possible answer is..

If you don't marry in a courthouse, simple stuff, no ceremony, no nothing, just the certificate.. THEN you'll only have 3 months to plan a ceremony the way you and your fianceé wants. And that's it. We all know that since the beggining. Your fianceé has 6 months to enter the U.S, but since she gets there, you'll have only 3 months to plan the ceremony or whatever you wanna do. Simple.

Carolina.

[Yellowhead 12]

You can always go to the courthouse and get married shortly after POE, then plan a vow renewal ceremony a couple months or even years down the road.

This is what we did two days ago. Files AOS today. We saw people there in Jeans, and you can generally get private certificates where no witnesses are required, or one is required (you can pay extra for a witness to be provided). We are waiting for the AOS process to be complete, and me to be working, prior to planning a second, non legal wedding of our own.