How to get married... quickly!

[Scandi 4,206]

It was way more important for us to get the greencard application in, than having a wedding ceremony. So we just did the county clerk ceremony, they had available appointments every day of the week.

It was $85 and no witnesses needed. Quick and easy. 

I believe the marriage certificate was $25, and we only ever needed 1 for my entire immigration journey. So we never bothered getting more copies of it. 
 

Edited Wednesday at 01:47 AM by Scandi

[TBoneTX 46,442]

10 minutes ago, Scandi said:

I believe the marriage certificate was $25,

Wow -- ours were $7 each.

10 minutes ago, Scandi said:

we only ever needed 1 for my entire immigration journey

How fortunate!   We ordered 7:  one for each set of parents, more for banks, and more for other official uses, leaving us exactly one for ourselves.  In our case, it was better to have risked having too many and not needing them than it was to under-order and be caught short.

[Scandi 4,206]

3 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

Wow -- ours were $7 each.

How fortunate!   We ordered 7:  one for each set of parents, more for banks, and more for other official uses, leaving us exactly one for ourselves.  In our case, it was better to have risked having too many and not needing them than it was to under-order and be caught short.

It's nasty Los Angeles, nothing is cheap here. 🤢

We have only needed one, we have used it in person for everything. Immigration interviews, bank meetings, SSA appointments etc.

Not a bad idea to have more if something happens to that one though. Especially if they're only $7 each. 😄

[Dashinka 24,993]

When my now wife got her K1, she did not jump on the next plane to get here.  Se actually took almost the entire six months of visa validity to tie things up before moving which gave us the chance to plan a nice wedding at my brother's house for immediate family and friends (~100 people).  We did not make any commitments until she had the visa in hand, and once we set the date.

10 hours ago, Scandi said:

It was way more important for us to get the greencard application in, than having a wedding ceremony. So we just did the county clerk ceremony, they had available appointments every day of the week.

It was $85 and no witnesses needed. Quick and easy. 

I believe the marriage certificate was $25, and we only ever needed 1 for my entire immigration journey. So we never bothered getting more copies of it. 
 

That is crazy, I believe in 2014, in my county they were $5 for a cert. copy.  Also we were able to get the certificates 2 days after the ceremony when we took the license in person to the clerk and 5 minutes later we had several copies of the certificate.

[garebear397 84]

Not that I recommend doing it exactly in the timing we did it....but we planned a larger wedding in my wife's home country, that was going to be our "second" wedding. Basically the idea was she would arrive in the US on K1, do a quick small ceremony, apply for the GC and AP right away, get her AP or GC before we needed to go back down for the big ceremony. We were planning our wedding out probably a year in advance, and just tried to build in plenty of buffer time if things got delayed -- and we ended up using most of the buffer time. 

 

So my wife arrived in the US in August, we got married a day later in my parents house with like 5 other people there, applied for GC and AP right away, and luckily got her GC in time in December, because we had the wedding planned for January in Chile. 

 

Like I said....I wouldn't recommend doing it with such tight timing, if you want to plan a big ceremony just build in lots and lots of buffer time, and know that you also basically have 9 months of time once you get the visa (6 months validity of K-1 visa, and have to marry in 3 months). 

 

[Scandi 4,206]

4 hours ago, Dashinka said:

When my now wife got her K1, she did not jump on the next plane to get here.  Se actually took almost the entire six months of visa validity to tie things up before moving which gave us the chance to plan a nice wedding at my brother's house for immediate family and friends (~100 people).  We did not make any commitments until she had the visa in hand, and once we set the date.

That is crazy, I believe in 2014, in my county they were $5 for a cert. copy.  Also we were able to get the certificates 2 days after the ceremony when we took the license in person to the clerk and 5 minutes later we had several copies of the certificate.

Yes, crazy expensive here. They claim that the certificate is "only" $17, but then you're also forced to pay a $9 "handling fee". 

It takes up to 8 weeks to get your marriage recorded in L.A. county (before that you can't get the certificate), we were lucky that it "only" took 4 weeks.

We got married in the end of November 2016, and in December USCIS raised their fees.

We managed to ship our AOS off 1 day before the new fees took effect, the same day our marriage was finally recorded and we could go pick up our certificate. 🤪

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ontarkie 14,657]

I started planning an outdoor wedding before our visas were approved. I bought my dress in Canada, we planned where we would get married. We picked the Old Mill since it is Arkansas and yes a big tourist and wedding destination. But it was new to me and exactly what we wanted. When we finally made the move we picked the place to order the food and cake. Grabbed a kit at Walmart to print our own invites. The hardest part was the JP, I had to call a few. Then we all gathered at the house for food, music and booze  

[Loren Y 2,759]

I am still doing the ceremonies and certificates in the same day here in Las Vegas. Copies are 25 here now, and the license is right around 100 dollars. If you are interested, just message me, and I can get you my contact info. As long as we do the ceremony on a Monday thru Friday when the clerks office is open, can get everything done in about an hour.

[SL2024 154]

We paid $17 per Marriage Certificate copy about a month ago