How quickly did you marry?

[Keenen and Nidia 1]

 

How quickly after your fiancé(e) arrived in the USA did you marry? 

 

Curious to hear couples experiences of their preparations before their wedding and how living arrangements were done in convenience, be it separate or not,  and how it all worked out to the wedding day.

 

Any factors dictated the time to marry from plans made to plans actually being executed? Was it relatively easy or did anything come up unexpectedly in plans?

 

Looking back at your experiences, would you have done it the same way, or done it differently in the time you decided to marry? 

 

Thank you so much for any insights for a couple going through the K-1 visa process to marry. 

 

 

 

 

[KULtoATL 1,551]

We went the easy way. Got married at the local court 1.5 months upon my entry to avoid any kind of wedding planning headache because none of us would know when our visa would be approved etc. I've lived with him since the day I entered the US on a K-1 seeing how I don't have family and friends here and I'm not in the position to lease my own property. Personally, we wouldn't have done it any other way and now we are just going about our lives as normal as possible. 

 

If you want a proper wedding, you can always get married at the court first to fulfill the getting married within 90 days criteria and file for AOS a.s.a.p and then plan a reception for a latter date. Less stressful and you can enjoy it more.

[Ben&Zian 4,398]

7 minutes ago, Keenen and Nidia said:

 

How quickly after your fiancé(e) arrived in the USA did you marry? We waiting about 80 days. Kind of get everything settled in, told my family month or so in advance, just did court house type wedding nothing fancy. There is no timeline as long as you marry within the 90 days of your fiance entering the country.

 

Curious to hear couples experiences of their preparations before their wedding and how living arrangements were done in convenience, be it separate or not,  and how it all worked out to the wedding day. -Think biggest thing is living arrangements. If you live by yourself, you have to prepare for someone to move in with you obviously. Make space and all. For myself I didn't get  a couple pieces of furniture and that let him decide to kind of put his own taste and style on things or least we chose it together. Helps it not feel like they aren't just a roommate so to say you know.

 

Any factors dictated the time to marry from plans made to plans actually being executed? Was it relatively easy or did anything come up unexpectedly in plans?Nope

 

Looking back at your experiences, would you have done it the same way, or done it differently in the time you decided to marry? Nope

 

Thank you so much for any insights for a couple going through the K-1 visa process to marry. 

 

 

 

 

 

[RJandHamid 1,133]

We had a courthouse marriage 2 weeks after he arrived in the US so we could get started on the AOS process.

We had a more traditional family wedding/reception a few months later, mostly so that family and friends could get together to celebrate with us.

 

I don't regret doing the courthouse wedding so quickly, as the 4 month wait for EAD/AP would have been made even longer by several months. It was easy and I have great memories of both weddings.

[Cyberfx1024 7,980]

17 minutes ago, Keenen and Nidia said:

 

How quickly after your fiancé(e) arrived in the USA did you marry? 

Curious to hear couples experiences of their preparations before their wedding and how living arrangements were done in convenience, be it separate or not,  and how it all worked out to the wedding day.

Any factors dictated the time to marry from plans made to plans actually being executed? Was it relatively easy or did anything come up unexpectedly in plans?

Looking back at your experiences, would you have done it the same way, or done it differently in the time you decided to marry? 

Thank you so much for any insights for a couple going through the K-1 visa process to marry. 

We got married about 5 days after we arrived. We just had a small group of family there at the courthouse with us and that was it.

 

We were moving the next week from NC to CA so that required us to get married ASAP. I wouldn't have done it any other way.

[cdneh 3,112]

We waited about 5 weeks. We were married by my Husband's stepfather, who was a minister.  He was 96 at the time, and we were his last wedding. We had a small reception at the inlaw's house before driving back to VA.  We are an older couple, so big fancy weddings were not something we wanted.

[Roel 7,193]

Married 4 days after I arrived. My mother in law made majority of our small wedding arrangements. 

[Keenen and Nidia 1]

That makes sense on jumping on the aos process, what time of estimation is being projected with this now? We plan on it. The more I’m thinking of this the more it make sense to have a traditional reception afterwards. My fiancée and I always joke we could marry right off the plane ha ha, but we’re just trying to be thoughtful and practical. Thanks so much for sharing. 

[YecaCruz 379]

1 minute ago, Keenen and Nidia said:

 My fiancée and I always joke we could marry right off the plane ha ha, but we’re just trying to be thoughtful and practical. Thanks so much for sharing. 

That's what we did. He stepped off the plane and 1.5 hours later we tied the knot at the courthouse in order to get AOS stuff started ASAP AND I didn't want to have to worry about finding a place for him to stay before we were spouses. Immediate family members who wanted to come/were able to come were present.  

 

Did a traditional wedding later in the year so we could celebrated with family and friends and so I could prance around in a dress for a few hours. Had the date picked out in Jan when we knew he was coming to the US and had all the details nailed down by April and pretty much coasted through until Sept. Him and I spoke about a few details while going through the K1 process but he didn't care much for the details so I pretty much did all the planning sola, which I didn't mind one bit.

 

We wouldn't change how we did it. We were ready to be married and didn't see a reason to wait - and I wanted to start the green card process right away so he could work.

 

Do what works and makes sense for you.

[Paul & Mallory 1,398]

25 minutes ago, RJandHamid said:

We had a courthouse marriage 2 weeks after he arrived in the US so we could get started on the AOS process.

We had a more traditional family wedding/reception a few months later, mostly so that family and friends could get together to celebrate with us.

 

I don't regret doing the courthouse wedding so quickly, as the 4 month wait for EAD/AP would have been made even longer by several months. It was easy and I have great memories of both weddings.

This is a personal question, so I certainly understand if you care not to respond - do you guys consider your wedding day as your "anniversary", or the courthouse date?

 

We are doing the same and wondering how big of a deal we should make the courthouse date, or if we should focus that on the wedding day we have later.

[Paul & Mallory 1,398]

We haven't completed this step yet, but will be soon - my fiancé comes home May 16th. I was visiting Sweden (his country) during the time his interview took place and he received his visa, and our plans actually changed before I even left to return to the states. With his POE on May 16, we initially picked June 16 as a wedding date and planned to have a small outdoor ceremony with immediate family and a few friends. However, his family expressed interest in flying to the states to attend the wedding if possible, so we decided to scratch June 16, and we plan to get legally married soon after he arrives (probably within a month) and have a traditional wedding with our families this fall. We also find this beneficial (hopefully) because getting legally pretty early on means we can begin the AOS process sooner rather than later as well. I feel like we may enjoy our traditional wedding more without feeling "rushed".

 

As for living arrangements - he will be moving in with me, I live alone in a house right now. We're pretty traditional there, too, so another reason getting legally married early on is a plus for us.

[RJandHamid 1,133]

3 minutes ago, Paul & Mallory said:

This is a personal question, so I certainly understand if you care not to respond - do you guys consider your wedding day as your "anniversary", or the courthouse date?

 

We are doing the same and wondering how big of a deal we should make the courthouse date, or if we should focus that on the wedding day we have later.

We haven't reached the anniversary of either one yet, so I'm not sure which one we will focus more on. Probably the courthouse date, since that is when we were legally and officially married. The traditional ceremony was really just a big party. 

[yuna628 9,712]

28 minutes ago, Keenen and Nidia said:

 

How quickly after your fiancé(e) arrived in the USA did you marry? 

 

Curious to hear couples experiences of their preparations before their wedding and how living arrangements were done in convenience, be it separate or not,  and how it all worked out to the wedding day.

 

Any factors dictated the time to marry from plans made to plans actually being executed? Was it relatively easy or did anything come up unexpectedly in plans?

 

Looking back at your experiences, would you have done it the same way, or done it differently in the time you decided to marry? 

 

Thank you so much for any insights for a couple going through the K-1 visa process to marry. 

 

 

 

 

My husband arrived mid-late August and we married on the last day in September. Everything about our wedding date had been already pre-arranged prior to his arrival. Our living arrangements were also pre-arranged, as we reside with my family. The majority of all wedding stuff had been completed prior to his arrival, with the official reservations, bookings, and invitations placed on the day he received his visa (which was several weeks before he flew out here). We planned our wedding throughout the process, something that I don't recommend or encourage to all couples. It can be done, but it is difficult. All individuals such as our venue, photographer, and minister were specially chosen and agreed to our terms that we couldn't provide them with an official date until we were sure. They were willing to work with us. All décor, outfits etc had been purchased long ago. Most everything went off without little difficulty but not without extreme stress. Our venue provided the biggest headache, as the manager was not very interested in assisting many of her customers. This caused me to scramble to search for other potential out of budget venues on short notice and would have upended the whole plan. Thankfully had a good support system, and our officiant interceded to the owner to get things moving along as was agreed to. That manager was literally the thing every reviewer complained about, and gave me many sleepless nights (as she continues to do to many brides!).

 

Our wedding was small but beautiful, rain threatened but held off until everything was done. Our best man ensured he got the whole wedding party sick, including myself.

 

When my husband arrived the first thing we did was purchase bedroom furnishings, get his SSN, obtain our license from the county clerk, and very soon after marriage added him to joint accounts. We spent October relaxing and prepping AOS paperwork, and sent it off in November. Beyond the venue issue, and the fact that big processing delays were happening at the time, including an issue with the embassy that occurred near around but resolved by interview time - not much prevented or changed what we intended to do. The bridal place lost the MoH and MoTB gowns about three times, and that was a fiasco - but that didn't ultimately cause too much of a delay on account of me reaching peak bridezilla by that point.

 

Looking back I don't know if we would have done it differently. There were typical wedding problems including people demanding they be invited or trying to invite themselves, people being control freaks... this plus the venue caused the most stress that I was ready to give up and just courthouse elope out of spite in the few weeks leading up to it. My husband was a steady influence of calm thankfully. It was our day, just the way we really wanted it to be, with no need of do-overs.

[Keenen and Nidia 1]

 appreciate all these thoughts. We’re pretty much in position to do similar and anything could happen. We love each other. We just want to be married and get started with our lives. 

[BVGApeach 288]

We are planning to get married at the courthouse ASAP (hopefully the same week we arrive) to get started on AoS.

 

We are going to plan an October ceremony. For us, the courthouse is just a legal requirement. We will exchange our vows at our October ceremony and will celebrate that date as our anniversary. A lot of our friends in Romania do it this way anyway, so it's kind of a nod to FI's country