How did everyone get on trying to plan a wedding when they have no idea when they'll be approved?

[RUSSandRACHEL 3]

As we'll be dealing with the Vermont Service Centre and hear their average time of processing is 6-7 months, (and obtaining the visa about 8) we feel our chances of obtaining the visa in 11 months is pretty good. Fingers crossed! We have just found a venue for our reception that we love that will be happy to take only a $300 deposit as opposed to everywhere else that want $2000! So I think we'll chance it. Hopefully, we'll be married by June 2010 and if not, it'll have to be put back. Its just the way it has to be. The worst is we lose $300.

Thanks again to everyone for their advice! I've been stressing about this all night. But its great to hear everyones opinions

I meant that the average time for the whole process, that is filing to visa in hand (for people from low-fraud countries where the embassies don't give trouble) is 6-7 months. VSC is currently processing petitions from December and January, so from 3-4 months ago. VJ currently estimates a late May approval date for January filers. Note that this doesn't mean that any one case can't take longer, and that things might change again until you file. But right now it looks like they are speeding up rather than slowing down. I personally think 11 months sounds pretty safe. But as I said before, it's your own personal risk (disclaimer!). Best of luck!

P.S. And now this all sounds like I'm the optimistic type... I'm actually not! I fret a lot about this and prepare for the worst... But rationally thinking I would say the odds are pretty good that things go smoothly, and this is why we decided to plan the wedding. Although we're not doing much besides booking a venue, and arranging for family travel.

Oh ok thats even better then! Well, the only major thing we need to book is the venue. And to let family and friends know (but I guess they'll be more understanding than vendors if plans get set back.) Everything else (flowers, cars, suits etc) can wait until we know what happening a bit more. I know that anything is possible and we may delayed, but its either risk a few dollars or have nothing arranged. I really dont want that. Just organising the wedding particuars is stressful enough! Without the headache of immigration. But we'll get there... its all worth it in the end! Thanks for the good luck we'll need it and... same to you!

Edited April 26, 2009 by RUSSandRACHEL

[fozzie 41]

I remember the good old days where you got approved in 3 months at the k1 stage. My wife did most of the planning as she is the USC but I did pull my weight. We had a small wedding ceremon with just immediate family in attendance. It was perfect, we are both so glad that we didnt do a big wedding. Itr made the whole process easier to arrange at short notice. I agree with many people on here though, it is safer to just do a civil marriage at the county court/clerk/cityhall and have a big cermony later. Less stress, and lets face it immigration is stressful enough. So is planning a big wedding. Why combine the two, you'll go nuts.

[rae_and_scott 1]

Take nothing for granted, and assume nothing, when dealing with the application/approval process. If you're issued the visa, plan a quick legal marriage (perhaps at the local courthouse) within the 90-day validity of your I-94, apply for AOS/EAD/AP, and have all the time in the world to plan a big celebration with a party, or whatever your hearts desire.

This is the best advice you could follow.

Thank you for everyones help and advice! I dont really anticipate any problems with our case (although I know and have heard - prepare for the unexpected so we're keeping an open mind). We have both never been married before, have no children, no criminal convictions etc... We simply just want to be together We will be mailing off the I-129F petition in July beacuse thats when I plan to go out there for 90 days. After that, we both know that I might have trouble getting back into the US because our application will be in process and we dont want to chance it. So that'll be my final trip out there.

Thank you aswell for everyones help about wedding planning. I hear what everyone saying about a small ceremony and then a celebration afterwards, and its great that other people want to do that, but we just dont want to. Our marriage is only going to happen once and we want to do it as normally as possible, just the way we have always wanted and dreamed of.

I also would have liked to only have gotten married once, and done it the way I wanted to, but when you have to deal with USCIS, you don't always get what you want.

I'm not saying this to be mean, but I think those of us who who advise you to do a legal ceremony followed by the wedding you want, say so because we have seen enough cases of people missing their projected dates and getting horribly stressed out b/c of it. If you choose to plan a big wedding without waiting for the visa, you choose to potentially miss that date. If you have relatives who plan to travel, you are thus putting a lot of other people's money at risk as well. Plain and simple, you must be prepared for things not to work out the way you want them to.

They may, of course. Like I said, I'm not trying to be mean, or overly negative. But I can say in my own case, we also had no prior marriages, no children, no criminal records, no complications whatsoever, and our visa took much longer than the estimated wait was supposed to be. Planning a wedding in advance of getting the visa simply wasn't a realistic option.

[Lisa and Ian 7]

Myself and my fiancee are trying to plan our wedding. He is american and I am from the UK. We havent yet sent off the I-129F Petition yet (we were hoping to do it this July whilst Im out there with him) because he has been self employed for years and in order to meet the poverty line requirements, he has obtained a new job. So we're waiting for him to rack up a few check stubs before we go further. However, we're looking at wedding venues and are told that so many get booked up so far in advance. Can anyone give any help/advice about how they went about booking wedding venues and vendors? Alot of places dont refund deposits and we dont know what to do. We are willing to take this risk if we have no other choice and we dont anticipate any problems with the K1 application.

So if we mail off the I-129F in July - does anyone out there think it'd be ok to book somewhere for a spring wedding 2010, say June?

It is advisable not to have wedding plans because you never know how long your NOA2 might take. But also your case could get held up in Additional Processing at NVC or at the consulate. We would take our chances with getting AP at the consulate after the interview. ( I just realized its 4 weeks away! Eeeek!)

We decided that we could not wait any longer to make plans as there would be nothing available so short notice in our price range. We just booked our church and our venue at the beginning of April. We waited to find out that NVC had sent our case to Vancouver. I made sure to ask though if in case the date that we booked needs to be changed, would we lose our deposit? They both said no. As long as you reschedule with the same venues. I am also in the process of looking for a photographer, and I did find one that we like and has our date and as is rescheduable as long as the date rescheduled is available.

Good idea!

[laura819 0]

Myself and my fiancee are trying to plan our wedding. He is american and I am from the UK. We havent yet sent off the I-129F Petition yet (we were hoping to do it this July whilst Im out there with him) because he has been self employed for years and in order to meet the poverty line requirements, he has obtained a new job. So we're waiting for him to rack up a few check stubs before we go further. However, we're looking at wedding venues and are told that so many get booked up so far in advance. Can anyone give any help/advice about how they went about booking wedding venues and vendors? Alot of places dont refund deposits and we dont know what to do. We are willing to take this risk if we have no other choice and we dont anticipate any problems with the K1 application.

So if we mail off the I-129F in July - does anyone out there think it'd be ok to book somewhere for a spring wedding 2010, say June?

We honestly just got completely lucky. We started planning an August 2009 wedding with the intention of then getting ME a spousal visa to the UK. Well, we ended up changing our minds. Like I said, we have just been insanely lucky it worked out for us.

Personally, I'd send the forms off now, and not wait. Your fiance won't need the pay stubs until the interview stage, which will be awhile off, so there's no need to wait for those before filing...

[BirdyGirl85 23]

I also would have liked to only have gotten married once, and done it the way I wanted to, but when you have to deal with USCIS, you don't always get what you want.

Yeah, I really only want to get married once, but in my opinion it's just not realistic most of the time for couples going through this. I think it's too risky. My fiance and I are just planning to get married at a court house when my fiance first moves, and then hopefully in a few years or so we can be married at Disneyworld like we want to. (But we don't know if we can ever afford that, but hey we can be hopeful...)

[MRStee 19]

Hi, I am in the states and my fiancee resides in Jamaica. What we have decided to do is get married at a Wedding Salon because you can give them two days notice and get married. Hopefully we are doing this in 2009. We are going to have our reception in 2010. Alot of people here in the states now split the wedding and reception. The economy is hard on all of us. Hope this helped a little.

Tracey and Steve

[toronto nonie 0]

my fiance and i really wanted to get married in the month of July as our birthdays are both in July (only a day apart). So we are planning on getting married on July 17, 2010 and have filed for our K-1 as of May 2009. We are crossing our fingers that our visa gets approved prior to that as we are so attached to that date - fortunately for us, the vendors we are dealing with are so understanding of our situation and have already told us that if things don't work out exactly as planned, they will work with us on a date change and we would not have to lose any money that we have paid already

[PAULUK 0]

Guys

I say absolutely no, you just have no idea when you'll be approved could be early, could be late it's too tricky. There are several other options such as Wedding Chapel etc. What we decided was to get married outdoors in the Town Square all we had to do was fill in a form for the Twon Council, go to the next meeting and meet the Councillors and that was that. We found:

1. There are lots of companys out there with everything you could ever want for Wedding accessories, Chairs, Arobrs, Columns, Arches etc they set it all up and took it all down at no extra cost.

2. The reception was easy, we got agreement from a local restaurant right off the square for the reception they were only too happy to have lots of people mid-afternoon.

3. Everyone loved it, people from the shops around the square were out watching the wedding, there was even a bit in the local paper.

4. We chose our own minister, an old Family friend of my wifes to perform the service.

You can go as grand or as simple as you want, we could have had it at any number of places here in Georgia outdoors, we could even had had it in our front yard, it'll even save you some money it did us it. It also gets you known by a lot of local people and local businesses which is never a bad thing.

Thanks...................................Paul

[Alex & Rachel 78]

I started planning the wedding after the interview. I had a rough date in mind before then, but nothing was confirmed until afterwards. I did wait for four months after being approved before flying out, though, and I can appreciate that not everyone wants to do this.

However, most of the planning I did in less than a month anyway (well, not really me - my mother-in-law and landlady planned everything for me). It's doable if you're willing to be flexible.

The place we rented was a cabana - nothing particularly fancy, but decently sized. We booked it and sent out the invitations two months beforehand.

The catering we did ourselves.

We found a great minister three weeks beforehand.

The rings were custom made and delivered in two days.

Flowers and food were purchased the day beforehand. This was just after Christmas, so many places weren't open or were low in stock. However, we managed to get a really large amount of good-looking (and long-lasting) roses from Costco.

Of course, most of my family had offered to help with food as a wedding present (despite my protestations). It certainly would've been a lot harder without family. And of course we did as much as we could ourselves, too - we rose at 6 am (having stayed up until 3 am to make desserts) to pick friends up from the airport, and while Alex was ferrying people to and from the cabana I spent all morning putting up decorations, laying the tables, etc.

60 guests, one day, and I never, ever have to plan or participate in a wedding or ceremony again, which is a big relief!

[BermyCat 1]

I'd start looking for your dress about a year out from when you want to marry. For some desginers, you need to order the dress really far in advance.

~ Catherine