K1 Visa: Moving Wedding Date

[Merica-n 65]

On 11/25/2021 at 10:58 AM, JeanneAdil said:

But u could marry in the courthouse within the 90 days and then have the big wedding as planned later

We're taking this approach.  We view it as there is married before god and married before the state, so we will marry when she arrives at a courthouse to satisfy the visa requirements, immediately qualifies for health insurance, etc and then have a medium sized reception with a religious ceremony for my family.  Not sure which one will be our anniversary.

 

But note that if you have a courthouse wedding, it is a good idea to have your immediate family and a few friends attend and take some pictures/video as evidence when you AOS.  Showing important family and some friends showed up will give the officers more evidence it's not a sham marriage.

[Mike E 11,742]

I am skeptical that any I-485 cases have been denied because no one besides the couple attended a county courthouse / office wedding ceremony.  

[Redro 4,611]

3 hours ago, Merica-n said:

We're taking this approach.  We view it as there is married before god and married before the state, so we will marry when she arrives at a courthouse to satisfy the visa requirements, immediately qualifies for health insurance, etc and then have a medium sized reception with a religious ceremony for my family.  Not sure which one will be our anniversary.

 

But note that if you have a courthouse wedding, it is a good idea to have your immediate family and a few friends attend and take some pictures/video as evidence when you AOS.  Showing important family and some friends showed up will give the officers more evidence it's not a sham marriage.

You can always take photos from the bigger wedding to the interview. 

[SalishSea 18,016]

3 hours ago, Merica-n said:

But note that if you have a courthouse wedding, it is a good idea to have your immediate family and a few friends attend and take some pictures/video as evidence when you AOS.  Showing important family and some friends showed up will give the officers more evidence it's not a sham marriage.

Absolutely incorrect.  We eloped 6 days after POE, to an island Inn in the Puget Sound.  The only people present besides us were the paid officiant, and two required volunteer witnesses.  No problems at all.  Our only photos are selfies.

[Adventine 3,201]

I had a similar experience as @Jorgedig , except our county didn't even require witnesses. It was me, my husband and the officiant. We focused on documentary evidence of our marriage: proof of travel to see each other, living together in my home country and merged finances.

[Merica-n 65]

6 hours ago, Mike E said:

I am skeptical that any I-485 cases have been denied because no one besides the couple attended a county courthouse / office wedding ceremony.  

 

2 hours ago, Jorgedig said:

Absolutely incorrect.  We eloped 6 days after POE, to an island Inn in the Puget Sound.  The only people present besides us were the paid officiant, and two required volunteer witnesses.  No problems at all.  Our only photos are selfies.

If you read what I wrote it said that it's a good idea and creates more evidence to include your immediate family and close friends in wedding photos that you submit with your application.  I'm in no way trying to suggest that it's required or that an application would be denied for that sole reason.

 

However, If you read the USCIS Adjudicator's Field Manual 21.3(a)(2)(I), a listed red flag is "Family and/or friends unaware of the marriage; "  It's not likely that any single red flag will torpedo an application, but reducing and eliminating red flags is good advice, and will improve the quality of your application, and make it less likely that your application will have a fraudulent feel.  If you can include your immediate family and a few friends in your wedding photos, it's a good idea.  You can search my quote in the link below to get a complete list of red flags.

 

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/policy-manual-afm/afm21-external.pdf

Edited November 27, 2021 by Merica-n

[SalishSea 18,016]

6 minutes ago, Merica-n said:

 

If you read what I wrote it said that it's a good idea and creates more evidence to include your immediate family and close friends in wedding photos that you submit with your application.  I'm in no way trying to suggest that it's required or that an application would be denied for that sole reason.

 

However, If you read the USCIS Adjudicator's Field Manual 21.3(a)(2)(I), a listed red flag is "Family and/or friends unaware of the marriage; "  It's not likely that any single red flag will torpedo an application, but reducing and eliminating red flags is good advice, and will improve the quality of your application, and make it less likely that your application will have a fraudulent feel.  If you can include your immediate family and a few friends in your wedding photos, it's a good idea.  You can search my quote in the link below to get a complete list of red flags.

 

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/policy-manual-afm/afm21-external.pdf

LOL.  No one was "unaware" of our marriage.  We are older, second marriage, adult kids etc.  

 

Again, not having a traditional wedding with friends and family present is absolutely not a red flag for adjusting status.   Family can be 100% aware of the marriage without being present for the wedding.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Jorgedig

[Merica-n 65]

15 minutes ago, Jorgedig said:

Family can be 100% aware of the marriage without being present for the wedding.

True, but Family can't be 100% unaware of the marriage after attending the wedding.  You easily disprove this red flag by submitting photos with them attending the wedding.  It makes sense to do it, if you can do it easily, but again not required.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Merica-n

[NandV 87]

We had a similar issue. We actually planned out a full wedding in India thinking we would do the CR1 and then covid hit. I applied for the K1 because I wasn't sure which would come faster. His family really wanted the CR1 so that they could have a massive wedding and invite all their friends/family, etc. Obviously that didn't end up working out and K1 was the best for us. However, the K1 process was exhausting imo. The embassy kept opening and closing, visa priorities kept changing, etc. We made the executive decision to keep the big wedding out of the picture until he could come to the US. Were our families happy? Nope, but we needed it for our mental peace. To be honest, the court wedding date kept changing too 😂 When he finally came, we went to Vegas with immediate family and a couple of friends and enjoyed that celebration. Came home and turned in all the paperwork, got him added to the health insurance, banks, etc. Then we planned the big party. We still haven't had the reception since his parents couldn't come from India, but the religious ceremonies are all done. This is the best way imo with this process. Families just won't get it and honestly, if you want the responsibility of marriage, you need to do what's best for you

 

Editing to add that I personally think you're making a big mistake in gambling timelines like that for the big party. Keep an eye out for the fact that there is a new covid variant on the horizon. Hopefully it works out, but one thing I learned in this process, is that initial application was a big gamble on its own

Edited November 28, 2021 by NandV

[Hammey_Wigeon 4]

Hi Guys! I am one of the January 2021 K1 Visa Filers. It took almost a year from the time we sent out our K1 Visa Application to get an interview appointment and probably additional 2 weeks to get the visa and packet in the mail.

 

There are 2 best choices that you've got right now.

1. If you really want a traditional wedding and still go with the K1 Visa, the best thing to do is push the wedding for 2023. Right now, the US Consulate in Montreal still has huge backlogs. And it is still case to case basis. You cannot really tell right now how long it will take for your application to be processed.

2. You can go ahead and get married now and just apply for I-130 instead. It is much cheaper to do this but they require a lot of documents. You can look up comparison of K1 Visa and the Spousal to get more info and decide which one work out better for you.

 

Best of luck to you and I hope that you'll get everything sorted out so that you can start with your application soon.

 

[Limey 551]

When I was going through this back in 2015 we penciled in a date based on visa expectations, with agreement with vendors that we could move it if visa was delayed. Our venue was a hotel and they said that sundays are rarely booked for events - this made it easy for them to schedule with relatively little risk they'd be losing another potential booking (as sundays were rarely booked up) and easy for them to flip to another sunday at late notice. In the end we were able to stick to our original date (we'd only scheduled around 3 months before the wedding so our guess on timelines was accurate).

 

Our DJ, photographer, officiant etc all agreed similar terms about switching the date. Since most of our guests were from out of state or overseas few were going to have to work the next day, so sunday worked fine. Our wedding wasn't massive (about 40 people) but it was great that we were able to have a relatively traditional wedding combined with the genuine legal marriage and without too much stress about dates. I appreciate covid delays has probably made this much more difficult.

As others have said, a wedding is just a wedding. A marriage is much more important - don't let the desire (or the demands of others) to have a big party get in the way of the basics of getting married and meeting the immigration requirements and timelines. Other people have no idea how the immigration system works so they don't realize the difficulties of trying to plan a wedding ceremony/party.

[yuna628 9,690]

On 11/25/2021 at 11:27 AM, Alexxie said:

To be fair, I probably already know what the answer to this question is, however, I will still pose it for further insight.

 

Due to difficult conversations/input from outside family members, we were coerced in to setting a wedding date after being together for 10 years and prior to getting engaged. (something dumb along the lines of, your wedding date is the date you get married and it's dumb to have a ceremony later - I digress very dumb reasoning in retrospect). Prior to being engaged, I submitted the K1 visa in the middle of May. We then set a tentative wedding date for the middle of August 2022. On the USCIS processing timelines, I see they're currently taking case inquiries for the end of March 2021.My fiance and I have fought on and off about whether or not there's enough time to complete the entire process with approval before our set wedding date in the middle of August. He's Canadian and currently only the Montreal Consulate is processing visas. There is talk that in early 2022 that other consulates/embassies will be open to further expedite the process. However, we're doubtful this will work in our favor.

 

We currently only have a venue, photographer/videographer, and floral design planner. I had clauses written in the contracts to move these services to an alternate date if the visa does not come in on time.

 

Yesterday, we got into a large argument, where he expressed that he was unsure whether we would get everything completed in time (although, I estimated 15 months for the entire process). We know that vendors need a big enough notice to change venues. He proposed moving it to October 2022, just 2 more months, to give it enough time. However, I feel we should just move it to Spring/Summer 2023 because I don't want to end up with the same problem. 

 

How far would you push back the wedding and should we wait until January/early February before making a final decision? (I kind of want to just go ahead and move it back further because my job is extremely stressful and I don't want this stress on top of it. Plus, we're in a very large metropolitan city so I know wedding season is busy, so I want my wedding planner and vendors to have enough time to make alternate plans. We're planning to run this by our planner next week.) I know we only have one shot to move these vendors to a new wedding date so I don't want to choose poorly.

We always had a floating wedding date and planned throughout the entire process. Some say it's impossible to have a ''real wedding'' in the timeframe that you're given. That's not really true, but it is incredibly difficult to do and you have to be willing to sacrifice a bit on how you define ''real wedding". I did not actually book a wedding date with my vendor until my husband had his visa. They were willing to work with me under a short timeframe. Some other vendors were very understanding and willing to accommodate us, others were not. This is a marriage just starting, and no one should be under such intense pressure to 'perform' or 'conform' to others expectations - that goes for vendors AND family members. We did indeed have a small wedding just as we intended and a reception dinner afterwards, and we had a great photographer.. but it was difficult and stressful. I got the flowers, designed the decorations, and did everything. At some point we thought of just eloping to a courthouse. The larger you make the wedding and have others involved the more difficult it will be. For those planning bigger things, perhaps keep in mind you generally have 6 months or so to enter after the visa is obtained, that should have given someone enough time to plan out something pretty great I'd think.

Edited November 30, 2021 by yuna628

[NandV 87]

On 11/30/2021 at 9:12 AM, yuna628 said:

We always had a floating wedding date and planned throughout the entire process. Some say it's impossible to have a ''real wedding'' in the timeframe that you're given. That's not really true, but it is incredibly difficult to do and you have to be willing to sacrifice a bit on how you define ''real wedding". I did not actually book a wedding date with my vendor until my husband had his visa. They were willing to work with me under a short timeframe. Some other vendors were very understanding and willing to accommodate us, others were not. This is a marriage just starting, and no one should be under such intense pressure to 'perform' or 'conform' to others expectations - that goes for vendors AND family members. We did indeed have a small wedding just as we intended and a reception dinner afterwards, and we had a great photographer.. but it was difficult and stressful. I got the flowers, designed the decorations, and did everything. At some point we thought of just eloping to a courthouse. The larger you make the wedding and have others involved the more difficult it will be. For those planning bigger things, perhaps keep in mind you generally have 6 months or so to enter after the visa is obtained, that should have given someone enough time to plan out something pretty great I'd think.

While this would have been great advice during normal times, I don't agree with it during the COVID years. I'm not sure what state you [OP] live in, but where I live, pretty much every venue and vendor is booked for every day of the week. They are not as amenable to changing dates as they may have been in the past. The concept of there always being an availability on a Sunday or a weekday is pretty much out the door. All the vendors I've spoken to have already said the 2022 weddings are going to be crazier than the 2021 ones. 

Also, omicron is picking up, so be prepared for delays in the process again.

Edited December 17, 2021 by NandV