Civil vs Church Wedding

[del0987 1]

Hi all,

 

Was hoping to get some help with this issue. In my I-130 packet, we provided a timeline with pictures. While my spouse and I got married through civil marriage, we wanted to wait until she was ready to come to the US to have our catholic church marriage. In one of the captions of a picture showing us preparing for our civil marriage, I mentioned this. What we didn't explain was our thought process, in that we saw this arrangement as allowing us to both finalize the religious commitment, but also make it into a huge goodbye party if you will. We also didn't want to exchange rings until we do the church wedding. Would this cause an issue during the CR1 interview?

Edited January 23, 2021 by del0987

[Crazy Cat 42,028]

It will not be an issue.  If you have a legal marriage certificate, you are married.  Marriage celebrations later are not prohibited.

[pushbrk 13,031]

12 hours ago, Lucky Cat said:

It will not be an issue.  If you have a legal marriage certificate, you are married.  Marriage celebrations later are not prohibited.

While I agree, in general, all things CAN be relevant depending on the totality of circumstances, including country, local customs, family acceptance etc.  The OP has provided information only on one small detail, not even the country.

[del0987 1]

11 hours ago, pushbrk said:

While I agree, in general, all things CAN be relevant depending on the totality of circumstances, including country, local customs, family acceptance etc.  The OP has provided information only on one small detail, not even the country.

Hi @pushbrk, this would be for Ecuador . My in-laws were witnesses to and signed the marriage certificate. One of my parents also was a witness. From a family acceptance perspective, no issues whatsoever. I don't think marriages in Ecuador are strictly religious, so a civil marriage is fine? We submitted ALL chats in our whatsapp, which led to over several hundred pages. I don't worry too much about it, but still feel a slight worry because we had been arguing about what we were going to do to get married, plans, etc. I felt my spouse was getting stressed, and we just made the process so much more complicated than it needed to be. We both wanted a church wedding, a large group of people, etc. But my spouse only had been baptised, and would still need to go through confirmation and communion, plus the marriage preparation courses. With all of my spouses commitments with work, etc, my spouse was unable to get everything done by when we set the date. Not to mention, we want to attend the marriage prep courses together, something not easily done. So our second best option was just to go get married through civil marriage and just get married, while putting off the religious marriage until after we have plans for my spouse to come to the US. It was not the best planning, but we did get one of my parents to fly down and witness the wedding as well as all my in-laws, her family, etc. Would we have done it differently? Absolutely, I think we should have just gone for the catholic wedding. But we just didn't plan for all the requirements properly, and just decided to get married and do it later.

On 1/23/2021 at 7:59 AM, Lucky Cat said:

It will not be an issue.  If you have a legal marriage certificate, you are married.  Marriage celebrations later are not prohibited.

Thank you!

[pushbrk 13,031]

8 hours ago, del0987 said:

Hi @pushbrk, this would be for Ecuador . My in-laws were witnesses to and signed the marriage certificate. One of my parents also was a witness. From a family acceptance perspective, no issues whatsoever. I don't think marriages in Ecuador are strictly religious, so a civil marriage is fine? We submitted ALL chats in our whatsapp, which led to over several hundred pages. I don't worry too much about it, but still feel a slight worry because we had been arguing about what we were going to do to get married, plans, etc. I felt my spouse was getting stressed, and we just made the process so much more complicated than it needed to be. We both wanted a church wedding, a large group of people, etc. But my spouse only had been baptised, and would still need to go through confirmation and communion, plus the marriage preparation courses. With all of my spouses commitments with work, etc, my spouse was unable to get everything done by when we set the date. Not to mention, we want to attend the marriage prep courses together, something not easily done. So our second best option was just to go get married through civil marriage and just get married, while putting off the religious marriage until after we have plans for my spouse to come to the US. It was not the best planning, but we did get one of my parents to fly down and witness the wedding as well as all my in-laws, her family, etc. Would we have done it differently? Absolutely, I think we should have just gone for the catholic wedding. But we just didn't plan for all the requirements properly, and just decided to get married and do it later.

 

Sounds like you have it all covered well, but they will not read hundreds of pages of chats.  Too late on that now.  The Immigrant Visa Unit in Ecuador has some idiosyncrasies though.  You'll want to check that out in the applicable regional forum.