Hi everyone,

Here´s the issue:

I am a U.S. citizen and my fiancee´is Spanish. After months of gathering the documents to get married in Spain, we are told that we have to wait six months to get married in Valencia because they have to verify the documents with the U.S., we have to meet with the judge, etc. Although I called various times asking questions including how long the wait time was, they never told me there was a longer wait time for U.S. citizens. Additionally, when we went to turn in our documents, they told us that if we wanted to marry in the U.S. it would be a wait time of a year or longer!!

The problem is that I assumed that we would definitely be married in time for when I leave in late July. I planned on returning to the U.S. for good in order to apply to graduate school and get everything ready. Now, I have to come back to Spain in October to get married. This creates an issue because I would be gone for about three months. The embassy told me to call back when we are married but that since I only have a certificate of empadronamiento and not a visa we probably don´t qualify for the six month residence required.

Now I´m not sure what to do because the paperwork to get married in Valencia is already in process. Should I look back into getting the fiancee´visa instead?

Thanks in advance!
Sonia

It is a hard situation you are in now, God, it takes too long to get married there....have you considered getting married in other country? Like Denmark ? You can make a trip there and in 3 days you married. Just a thought!
See which path is faster for you:
1. wait 6 month and get married and then do DCF (I do not know how fast it is in Spain this process), the advantage is that everything is faster for your future wife when she gets in to the States, she gets her GC and SSN in 2-3 weeks. But the residence in Spain it is an issue for you to can start DCF soooooo.
2. start the fiance visa and probably you'll be done in 8-9 months...or more

Good luck!

Hi Sonia,

I can verify this, I am a spanish citizen married to a US citizen. It took us about 5-6 months to get married after submitting our paper-work, Spain is terrible in burocracy, really really slow... We were also in a hurry at the beginning but then we took our time and I am glad we did now because the DCF process seems to be a fast and straightforward one. I would suggest to wait and get married in Valencia, this will make much easier the DCF process. If you can prove you have been living in Spain for the last 6 months then it shuould be easy.

Kitten

I echo maydaydas advice to marry in Denmark.. it's super easy
you can still celebrate in Spain afterwards and then you can file at the embassy in Spain

here's a link (though it's mostly in German, but also English)

http://www.expressheirat.de/index.html

here's another link
http://www.heiraten-leicht-gemacht.de/english/service.html

even though these services cost money, it's also possible to figure things out without going through such a service and save the money

Here's my story--we went through exactly the same drama a few months ago. We gathered all the necessary information to get married (don't forget you need to have your birth certificate apostilled in the US), which included going to Barcelona to get a sworn affivdavit on a number of issues; namely, that i had lived in Spain for the last year (cause I had no proof) and that I was single (in the US, we have marriage certificates, but no single certificates). Well, we finally turned it all in to our civil registry and the woman told us that even though we have everything in order, that the attorney general could veto us thinking we are a marriage of convenience. Well, all in all, there was no problem, he signed us off and we got married. Start to finish was 3 full months (we decided to get married after Christmas and were married 3/31). So immediately afterwards, we went to Madrid to DCF (on April 18th) and my husband's interview is next wednesday (5/23) Will be just over a month for DCF if all goes well. As for proof of residence, I had an empadronamiento from only February of this year (didn't know it was necessary), a library card from march 2006, and a joint bank account (that we just set up and it didn't show the date that I was added--so that was a plus---do this!). The lady at the embassy was sold on the bank account. I would advise against doing the fiance visa because when you are married and do DCF, my understanding is that you get all the priviledges in one shot, as opposed to contiually applying for work permit, and whatever else. I might suggest that the government officials are just planning for worst case scenario by saying 6 months. That's what they did to us. So we just waited on the planning and planned our wedding in 3 weeks. They did no checking with the US on anything. Not conveniant but....

let me know if you have any more questions.

One more thing....I just wanted to emphasize....residence (at least here) means living here, not having a visa. I never had a visa, and lived there for 1.5 years just illegally. I think they had better things to worry about than arresting me.

HI. My girlfriend was living here for 4 years, then she moved to the USA to study (3 years ago). Does anyone know if she needs to live here those 6 month before the wedding in spain or those 4 years that she did spend here are enough to apply for the direct consular filing? Thank u

Thanks for the responses! I am waiting for next week when our papers are confirmed to see when they give us a date with the judge to verify we are not a marriage of convenience. I truly hope it takes shorter than six months (three months would be great We are definitely going to do the joint bank account thing. Thanks girlafraid7 for the advice.

If it really is a long wait time, the Denwark wedding is an option. So wish me luck guys!

In response to mdc, the six-month residence in Spain before filing DCF is what counts. I had a student visa for a year, lived here another 2.5 years without a visa and leaving for 3 months before applying for DCF is an issue. Proof of residency could be certificate of empadronamiento, work visa, apartment contract, light bill, etc.