City Hall Wedding Philadelphia

[Lorna&Alex 104]

Hey Everyone 

 

My fiance and i applied for the K1 visa back in July 2017 and we're still waiting on NOA2. We have our wedding booked for July 2018 but worried we're not going to make it due to all the backlogs, so we're currently just trying to make a Plan B. 

Has anyone been married in the Philadelphia city hall??

If so, what is the process like? can we still choose a date for our wedding at the city hall?

We also want to be able to have a small quick ceremony at the city hall and have just our parents there, is this possible?

[Emeryx 38]

I'm having the same problem and having to push back our wedding planned date in April and i've received my NOA and currently waiting for our case to be mailed to the NVC and that process is seeming to taking longer than usual for people as of lately! 

 

As I've read on here from many threads, as long as your wedding date is after your interview and after you're accepted and have your visa in hand then you should be fine but many people advise you to not do anything before that! it could get your K1 denied. 

[LionessDeon 2,061]

K1 Golden Rule:  Do not book anything without visa in hand.   Processing times are far to unpredictable.

 

That being said yes of course you can have a court house ceremony.  I don't think you need to plan a date with the city hall ahead of time.  You just go there on the day of your choosing.  you could look at their county website to be sure.     There is no requirement or restriction on what type of wedding ceremony takes place, only that you are legally married IN THE USA, within 90 days of POE.  K1 visas are for those who wish to marry inside the USA.  You're looking for alot of AOS trouble doing anything else.

[Lorna&Alex 104]

49 minutes ago, LionessDeon said:

K1 Golden Rule:  Do not book anything without visa in hand.   Processing times are far to unpredictable.

 

That being said yes of course you can have a court house ceremony.  I don't think you need to plan a date with the city hall ahead of time.  You just go there on the day of your choosing.  you could look at their county website to be sure.     There is no requirement or restriction on what type of wedding ceremony takes place, only that you are legally married IN THE USA, within 90 days of POE.  K1 visas are for those who wish to marry inside the USA.  You're looking for alot of AOS trouble doing anything else.

Yes I am aware of this,  I have been told by 100 VJ members that we shouldn't have booked the wedding before the visa was in hand but we did this before we had done full research and before the processing times changed drastically for the worse.

 

Fortunately our venue is amazing and they are going to let us delay our wedding until July 2019!! 

 

Thank you for the information

[Lorna&Alex 104]

2 hours ago, Emeryx said:

I'm having the same problem and having to push back our wedding planned date in April and i've received my NOA and currently waiting for our case to be mailed to the NVC and that process is seeming to taking longer than usual for people as of lately! 

 

As I've read on here from many threads, as long as your wedding date is after your interview and after you're accepted and have your visa in hand then you should be fine but many people advise you to not do anything before that! it could get your K1 denied. 

Yeah it sucks! we never thought it would take this long to get the visa! But I have done a lot of research now and I know it's for the best to just push our wedding back until 2019 and have a small courthouse ceremony this year after our visa is approved of course we'd never have any type of wedding before we actually received the visa. Hopefully it all works out for you!!