August 2017 wedding- ok to plan? (split)

[Scandi 4,224]

It's very hard to plan for a wedding when you're in this process especially if you you want a specific date.

I'm VERY glad me and my fiancé never talked about a specific date as this process will take way longer than we first expected. We did talk wedding plans, something we had to stop doing as it just got depressing as time went by.

So from my own experiences, I would say no to start planning around a certain date as you never know what will happen. You have a lot of time to do this though, but it might go quick, it might take a year.

[templeton 120]

To reiterate what others have said, I think you're safe with that timeline. You can't make the process go faster, but you can slow it down somewhat at later stages if you want.

Planning a wedding is tricky given all tight timeline windows that you have to adhere to. Tough to make financial commitments so far ahead when you don't know if there will be problems with he visa process, yet there's the reality that you have to book a lot of things far ahead like locations and such, before they fill up. On the other hand, you don't want to make it too far out because you have to be married within 90 days of arriving. Not to mention that you can't start the AOS process until you're married.

Instead of stressing about timing everything perfectly, just do what a lot of others do...plan your big public wedding for a realistic date in the future (your target date should be fine), but cruise through the K-1 and then as soon as you arrive go get a quickie marriage down at the courthouse. You no longer have to stress - you've met the USCIS conditions, and can get a head start on the AOS process. Have your big wedding with friends and family a few months down the road with no one else being the wiser.

[USC1961 251]

14 months sound reasonable but when dealing with Visas nothing is a guarantee. If I were in the Op's shoes I would avoid paying for anything that cannot be refunded or changed date wise (wedding venue for example).

I started putting deposits down for our wedding after we scheduled his interview (for several months out). (The wedding date was to be about 3 months after the interview). I really didn't want to have a "legal wedding" and a separate reception.

My take on this is it doesn't have to be a reception. Why not a full fledged ceremony? No one has to know that you went to the courthouse to legally marry beforehand. While I understand the sentiment behind your statement, there is nothing illegal about renewing your vows. In fact it would be really special to get married twice to the one you love the most. This allows one to plan the big day you always wanted together after k-1 is issued. Just my take on it.

[lacolinab13 86]

My take on this is it doesn't have to be a reception. Why not a full fledged ceremony? No one has to know that you went to the courthouse to legally marry beforehand. While I understand the sentiment behind your statement, there is nothing illegal about renewing your vows. In fact it would be really special to get married twice to the one you love the most. This allows one to plan the big day you always wanted together after k-1 is issued. Just my take on it.

Obviously this is what most people on VJ with K-1s end up doing. It's certainly not an issue of legality and I know lots of people who signed the papers a certain amount of time before their ceremony/reception, and I couldn't have cared less and was happy to be at their wedding. However, it just really didn't feel right for me. As soon as I had gone to the courthouse, I would have thought of myself as married, and didn't want to lie to anyone or continue being only engaged. The really special part for me is saying the vows and becoming bound by them, becoming husband and wife, and that in my opinion only happens once - any subsequent vows wouldn't have the same weight for me. I think part of what makes weddings special is that you ONLY do it once and those vows last the rest of your life. I also know people who considered their courthouse wedding their wedding and then had a reception later - my own reason for not wanting that was that I really didn't want to plan two different days! I found wedding planning mostly stressful and would only ever do it again if I some day have a daughter getting married.

Again, just my opinion and what was right for me. In our case it was not an issue because we wanted a small wedding, so were easily able to plan during the k-1 process but on a relatively short time line in wedding industry terms and gave ourselves enough time to make it unlikely that we would run into issues.