Wedding Plans?

[LAS1204 6]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this - not sure where is.

I've noticed people put the dates they expect to get married. How can you know what date you're going to marry? I thought one couldn't make set plans until the fiance visa is in hand?

I want to plan my big wedding but can't because every vendor wants a date andbI can't provide one because I don't know when fiance can come to the US or how long the process is going to take. We're going to go through the Montreal (Canada) embassy and I heard it can take a while especially with all Vancouver files going to Montreal now.

[Transborderwife 4,666]

The key is don't. There's no written rule anywhere that says you can't have a courthouse marriage first and plan a big wedding for later.

[LionessDeon 2,060]

Wishful thinking mostly likely. You really can't plan anything in advance.

[domwyn 0]

My NOA2 was just approved after a 4.5 week delay due to an RFE. My fiancé has lives in Canada currently and we established a while ago that we'd have the wedding ceremony in Canada (no marriage license) in front of God and our family in June with or without the Visa. Will that be an issue if we do that. In my mind it's a ceremony and no legal documents are generated. We still plan to wait for the Visa and do the legal marriage afterwards. Thanks!

[htfaust 131]

My NOA2 was just approved after a 4.5 week delay due to an RFE. My fiancé has lives in Canada currently and we established a while ago that we'd have the wedding ceremony in Canada (no marriage license) in front of God and our family in June with or without the Visa. Will that be an issue if we do that. In my mind it's a ceremony and no legal documents are generated. We still plan to wait for the Visa and do the legal marriage afterwards. Thanks!

You'll run into a very high risk of being considered too married for a K-1 and not married enough for CR-1. Search similar threads regarding that and you'll see many many people jeopardized their whole process by doing that.

[domwyn 0]

Even if we don't tell them we had the ceremony? At the interview and crossing into US we'd say we are not married and legally speaking we wouldn't be.

[yuna628 9,665]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this - not sure where is.

I've noticed people put the dates they expect to get married. How can you know what date you're going to marry? I thought one couldn't make set plans until the fiance visa is in hand?

I want to plan my big wedding but can't because every vendor wants a date andbI can't provide one because I don't know when fiance can come to the US or how long the process is going to take. We're going to go through the Montreal (Canada) embassy and I heard it can take a while especially with all Vancouver files going to Montreal now.

One thing I've found is that vendors can be pretty understanding if you find one that wants your business and are generally nice persons. If they want and care about your business then they will work with you. We planned out a pretty normal wedding by finding people willing to work with us. You can see how long we waited for our wedding, and most of the hard stuff like securing the vendor was done within the month of him having his visa in hand. Everything else was done ahead of time. Once we had our interview date, we hard set our date for the wedding (though of course I would not officially recommend this to anyone unless you are very confident in the strength of your case or the ease of your embassy), and started securing people. Goodness knows we moved our 'tentative date' at least 5 times during this thing, but in the end it still worked out okay. Talking to people and explaining the situation really helps, but don't reserve something with cash unless you can either get out of it or move it easy, or you know that most likely that date is absolutely okay.

Most people seem to do courthouse weddings and have 'the big one' later on when there's time to plan. We didn't do that because we aren't normal folk.

[GloryAbdell 3]

I think this is the issue for all of us- I have to say that I would prefer just one wedding and we want something intimate as we are not planning to go broke getting married. It is hard when it says you should provide proof of wedding / marriage intention - yes itbisbabout working with vendors and can't really send a Save the date - so being doing the little details- decorations, rings, dress etc... Good luck for our cases to move fast !

[Transborderwife 4,666]

Even if we don't tell them we had the ceremony? At the interview and crossing into US we'd say we are not married and legally speaking we wouldn't be.

Still fraud. Btw, in Canada married is married symbolic or not. If you're licenced to do a wedding it's a legal marriage

Edited May 6, 2016 by Transborderwife

[JFH 12,189]

The embassy staff have been known to dig through Facebook and other social media sites and if they find pictures that even suggest some form of ceremony they can deny the visa. Don't risk it. Have a "goodbye and good luck" party before you leave Canada if you want to have some form of gathering for your family and friends.

[Ontarkie 14,193]

Still fraud. Btw, in Canada married is married symbolic or not. If you're licenced to do a wedding it's a legal marriage

I was just going to say this.

You cannot do any type of symbolic wedding in Canada, marriage license or not.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Ontarkie