We got married here in Sofia last month, and it was lovely. Except that the translator we hired got a little confused and just translated in a whisper to my parents, so I didn't totally catch all the details of the ceremony. But, still - it was fabulous and the day couldn't have been happier. My advice to anyone getting married here in Bulgaria is to get all your documents together well ahead of time and to make absolutely sure that all the name translations from English to Cyrillic alphabets are perfectly consistent. The ladies at the marriage hall knew exactly what they were doing and were sweet and helpful at every step. We had no problems.
THE DCF PROCESS:
As of last week, I've been living here in Sofia for 6 months, so I called the embassy Monday and set up an appointment for Wednesday and we took our I-130 petition and supporting documents over to the embassy and filed there. Again, all went well. I have dual citizenship - USA and France; since Bulgaria is now part of the EU I got a Bulgarian permanent resident card back in January simply by showing the foreigners office my French passport and by having my (then) fiance sign a form that he would support me, we would live together like family, and that I wouldn't be a burden on the country. I am sooooooo glad I have that card.
Some things that the Sofia embassy does differently:
They require that all document translations be done by a certified translation company. (There are dozens in Sofia, and each document cost between 12 and 40 leva to translate and legalize. To get the legalization done, you have to get an official duplicate of the document and then take that duplicate to the translation agency, and they will translate it and get it stamped and Hague-apostilled and satisfactorily covered with all sorts of official this and thats. If you don't want to pay for rush service for the legalization part, translate these documents 2-3 weeks before you need them.) We used a company called Scandinavia Consult and were totally satisfied.
The embassy requires that the marriage certificate and beneficiary's birth certificate are legalized, but other documents (like the up-and-coming police certificate and statement of marital status) just need to be translated.
They only accept cash (leva or dollars)
We arrived at the embassy with $190 in cash, all our documents in a folder (the originals on one side and the copies on the other), an envelope of photos of our wedding and showing us together over time, and our passports. We had a "back-up" file of additional evidence like congratulatory cards, library cards, more photos, etc., that they never looked at.
The first thing we did was fill out a DHL form for the future visa delivery and paid our petition fee. Then a lady called us up to the window, looked over our forms, asked us a few questions, gave us information (including a packet in Bulgarian) about what we need to do for the next interview (proof of ongoing relationship, medical exam (they gave us a form to give to the clinic), police certificate, marital status certificate, $380 fee, DS-230 and I-864 forms, birth certificate, etc.), and then she told us to sit and wait for the consular officer to call us. When he called us up a few minutes later, he again looked over our forms, asked us how we met and what our plans are, flipped through our pictures and spent some time discussing my residency status, since it was the first time he'd seen the new EU residency card (which is kind of insubstantial looking). Then he said he saw no problems and that everything looked just fine.
YAY!
He told us to contact the embassy again in no less than ten days to schedule our next interview, gave us back our originals, and sent us on our merry way. We were at the embassy less than 45 minutes. I guess they're doing my Adam Walsh name check now.
We're now collecting the next set of documents, which are inexpensive but require some footwork. We tried to set up a medical appointment at one of the clinics, but they said that we have to wait until we have an exact date set for the second interview. They promised they could schedule the exam for the next day, if need be, so we'll just a week or so on that. I fretted to the consular officer that we didn't have much proof of the ongoing relationship, but that we do have a shared credit card. He said that the credit card and some snapshots should be just fine.
So... so far, all is going very, very well and we are hopeful that it stays that way!
