Getting married on a Visa Waiver

[Matt_ 0]

5 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

OP: Something doesn't make sense to me. With whom did she speak to? A tier 1 could not tell to send anything, and I doubt a tier 2 could either. They aren't authorized to do so. An RFE needs to be sent out to the house with an address and paperwork to send too. Whatever she sent out wouldn't be matched up with her case. Did you ever cancel the first application or determine what happened with it via an Infopass appointment that went AWOL before sending in the second?

 

It can take up to six months to be processed standard, before you can begin making inquires to prompt them. There will be an additional few months to finish up the consular process after approval, which will require you to be present in the UK. So yes, you should not have arranged any wedding plans. It's difficult, but it should not be done. Our process took nearly a year from start to finish, and we planned throughout (which is not something I'd recommend to someone having lavish affairs). There's plenty to plan without dropping large sums of money that may not be refunded.

 

So here's the hard truth: The VWP is for visiting. If you attempt to enter for reasons other than a visit this is a problem. You're saying on the one hand you will return to the UK, which is fine. The problem here is getting married in this scenario is not a spontaneous action that is allowable, but rather a pre-planned one.  Will you tell the officer your intent to marry? What do you think they will say and do? Be terrified not of the officer suspecting you to stay, be terrified of them discovering what you intend to do. Because once they discover it, there's not a lot of convincing you can do.. And in no way should you ever ever lie to an officer. There is no true bona-fide way of proof of returning to the UK. Proving you have a job, bills, a home to return to, travel insurance all can help.. but there is never a guarantee. Sending an email to CBP also gives you nothing, no guarantee. They will not care about the situation.

 

Your in-laws have spent a great deal of money because both of you failed as a couple to explain the process of how long it would take to them. That is a mistake of misunderstanding on your part - one that you should be honest and fess up to. Dates can be moved even if a small amount is lost. People are understanding to immigrant couples put in difficult situations. My suggestion is to be honest with the in-laws, keep saving up (it's helpful and responsible), and finish the process you started without complicating matters.

 

Thank you. It looks like I am in for a tough chat with the future in-laws...

[Matt_ 0]

18 minutes ago, EandH0904 said:

Exactly. If they don't let you in at all the $10k on the wedding is a moot point. 

This is very true, I will speak with my in-laws about this. 

[Pennycat 880]

If it helps at all, a lot of "non-refundable" fees are not actually *refundable* but can usually be kept with the vendor and transferred to a different date (usually within a set period of months). Possibly with a little bit of a fee, but this early on, I would assume that any vendor would rather know NOW that they've got an opening in early September than find out at the end of August.It's not the easiest thing in the world because you've got to hope that everyone you've already paid will also all be available on the same day in the future but spoiler alert: happened to me moving from a late January wedding (dead wedding season) to a late April wedding (prime wedding season, complete with cherry blossoms in bloom) and they were literally ALL available.

 

If you think about the economics of being, say, a wedding photographer. That one date, usually one of 52 Saturdays per year, of varying desirability (in reality, there's fewer than 25 days per year that are the prime wedding days, and most vendors need to compete for clients the other weekends), one date is worth, say, $3000. You are *working* much more than just that one day and part of the cost is precisely because people pretty much only have weddings on Saturdays, you can pretty much only make money on Saturdays that you're available. This makes makes those 52 dates per year very valuable and this explains the cost. Now, imagine things like brides booking 3 photographers on 3 different dates because they're waiting to see if their first-choice caterer will have an opening on the same day as their top-choice band (or other stuff like that)  before really settling on a date. How many other brides did you just turn down because this woman was trying to keep her options open?  

 

Do you travel a lot? Ever notice how big standby lists can often get cleared really quickly? That's because a lot of people buy refundable tickets for the 2pm and the 4pm, hoping to make the 2pm. Standby list for the fully-booked 4pm is long. Until the 2pm takes off and those who made the 2pm cancel their booking on the 4pm, boom, everyone on standby on the 4pm gets on. Airlines compensate for this by overbooking flights and *usually* it all works out ok (even though it's overbooked, there's seats for everyone plus standby) but imagine a wedding photographer overbooks and needs to "bump" a couple (aka: not show up for their wedding). Not possible in that industry. Thus, the non-refundable thing. 

 

Also consider how many couples break up just weeks before? Why do YOU, the wedding photographer who only has the opportunity to make a living 25 days per year have to be out thousands of dollars THEY didn't think their engagement through?

 

Those really are the reasons for most of the strict refund policies.

 

TRUST ME, I got hit with this hard. Our wedding date just happened to be what became the "blizzard of the century" (I still think 2010 was bigger but eh). Even though the venue canceled, the band canceled and the caterer canceled (venue: refund, band: refund, caterer: future credit), the florist and the photographer said they could still show up. So if *I* canceled on *them*, I couldn't get a refund but rather a "future date credit" because of the "Act of God" clause. And on top of it, with the florist, because the flowers themselves had already been purchased by the florist for me (but not arranged which is a significant if not the biggest part of the cost), I owned the flowers and was free to come get them if I wanted. Thousands of loose flowers to keep in my apartment with my snowed-in in-laws and a frozen wedding cake. Ha. So anyway, if my whole wedding was cancelled with 3 days to go and it was considered by more than one vendor that *I* did the cancelling and I still got "future date credit", you can too.

 

Plus, the end result was that we wound up having our legal ceremony in the lobby of the hotel that our families were snowed in at (right around the corner from our apartment), with just our families and whichever friends were able to trudge/ski over. That's my profile picture (we decided to have the photographer come and photograph the ceremony plus have a snowy photoshoot in our wedding clothes just in case she wasn't available for our rescheduled date). Made for an adventure, lovely photos and a very memorable story. Can't tell you how many (really beautiful) snow globes we've gotten as wedding gifts! Plus, basically everyone thinks that my husband and I are some sort of Zen master saints for handling it with grace and good humor.

 

Sorry for the novel. TL;DR: non-refundable doesn't mean you're screwed. You can almost definitely negotiate for a future date. Rescheduled weddings aren't the end of the world and depending on how you handle it (and any accompanying stress your fiancee may experience), can actually win you points with the in-laws.

Edited June 7, 2017 by CatherineA

[Mollie09 1,543]

3 hours ago, yuna628 said:

OP: Something doesn't make sense to me. With whom did she speak to? A tier 1 could not tell to send anything, and I doubt a tier 2 could either. They aren't authorized to do so. An RFE needs to be sent out to the house with an address and paperwork to send too. Whatever she sent out wouldn't be matched up with her case. Did you ever cancel the first application or determine what happened with it via an Infopass appointment that went AWOL before sending in the second?

 

It can take up to six months to be processed standard, before you can begin making inquires to prompt them. There will be an additional few months to finish up the consular process after approval, which will require you to be present in the UK. So yes, you should not have arranged any wedding plans. It's difficult, but it should not be done. Our process took nearly a year from start to finish, and we planned throughout (which is not something I'd recommend to someone having lavish affairs). There's plenty to plan without dropping large sums of money that may not be refunded.

 

So here's the hard truth: The VWP is for visiting. If you attempt to enter for reasons other than a visit this is a problem. You're saying on the one hand you will return to the UK, which is fine. The problem here is getting married in this scenario is not a spontaneous action that is allowable, but rather a pre-planned one.  Will you tell the officer your intent to marry? What do you think they will say and do? Be terrified not of the officer suspecting you to stay, be terrified of them discovering what you intend to do. Because once they discover it, there's not a lot of convincing you can do.. And in no way should you ever ever lie to an officer. There is no true bona-fide way of proof of returning to the UK. Proving you have a job, bills, a home to return to, travel insurance all can help.. but there is never a guarantee. Sending an email to CBP also gives you nothing, no guarantee. They will not care about the situation.

 

Your in-laws have spent a great deal of money because both of you failed as a couple to explain the process of how long it would take to them. That is a mistake of misunderstanding on your part - one that you should be honest and fess up to. Dates can be moved even if a small amount is lost. People are understanding to immigrant couples put in difficult situations. My suggestion is to be honest with the in-laws, keep saving up (it's helpful and responsible), and finish the process you started without complicating matters.

 

You can get married on VWP. You can enter with the intent of getting married.

You just can't intend to stay and adjust status.

[yuna628 9,530]

7 minutes ago, Mollie09 said:

 

You can get married on VWP. You can enter with the intent of getting married.

You just can't intend to stay and adjust status.

Yes you can. But good luck getting past the CBP once you tell them of those intentions with a currently pending K1 application...

[mallafri76 1,012]

You're coming to marry your US fiancé on the VWP with no job or home in the UK?!?! Sorry but any half decent CBP will deny you entry, as they should since you have zero ties to the U.K. 

 

In regards to the wedding, I'm in the hotel industry and since you're marrying outside of "regular wedding season", the venue may be more open to letting you re-schedule without penalty. Also, usually the deposit is 10% or 15%, so if the wedding is $10,000, you may loose $1,000 or maybe $1,500 by pulling out. A small price to pay to not screw up the visa process. 

[Boiler 43,561]

16 hours ago, Matt_ said:

TL:DR, how can I prove I will return to the UK after getting married on a Visa Waiver, when I won't have a job to return to in the UK

Simple, you can not.