Processing time for K-1

[Kyle89 4]

Hello everyone,

 

I’m the petitioner, my fiancé is Canadian. We filed in December of 2018. We have set everything up to get married in August of 2019. We have only received our NOA1. 

 

I’m thinking we will have to push the wedding back and send out new invitations and everything however I don’t want to have her freaking out yet, but I haven’t been able to reach anyone at USCIS to get a timeline on a decision for the K-1. 

[Trapper99 30]

The times between NOA1 and 2 have come way down. Looks like some people in Dec are starting to get there NOA2's, so yours could be any day or still 2 months. Very possible you may need to adjust your plans.

 

My NOA1 is 10 days after yours, and I am hoping for a Sept wedding, but I am not scheduling anything until interview is scheduled.

[payxibka 10,045]

11 minutes ago, Kyle89 said:

Hello everyone,

 

I’m the petitioner, my fiancé is Canadian. We filed in December of 2018. We have set everything up to get married in August of 2019. We have only received our NOA1. 

 

I’m thinking we will have to push the wedding back and send out new invitations and everything however I don’t want to have her freaking out yet, but I haven’t been able to reach anyone at USCIS to get a timeline on a decision for the K-1. 

Unfortunately Montreal is not the fastest consulate,  you are very much at risk

[Nashvan 133]

August seems pretty optimistic. It's a good idea to hold off on booking until dates are confirmed down the road. I'd be prepared to push back the wedding date. That being said, it seems right now the processing times are much faster than last year around this time. For comparison, we filed I-129F exactly one year ago today and I did not receive the K-1 visa until February 21 this year.

[Kyle89 4]

45 minutes ago, Trapper99 said:

The times between NOA1 and 2 have come way down. Looks like some people in Dec are starting to get there NOA2's, so yours could be any day or still 2 months. Very possible you may need to adjust your plans.

 

My NOA1 is 10 days after yours, and I am hoping for a Sept wedding, but I am not scheduling anything until interview is scheduled.

The NOA1 came on December 10th, and the timeline here says it should be adjudicated by April 19th or 29th or so. But I think that’s just the 129F. 

 

We had to book a place cause all the rates in the area literally doubled the month after we booked. However, since we have booked already we can change the date and still be fine, just need to send out a letter pushing back the date to the guests. 

[Kyle89 4]

47 minutes ago, Vans said:

August seems pretty optimistic. It's a good idea to hold off on booking until dates are confirmed down the road. I'd be prepared to push back the wedding date. That being said, it seems right now the processing times are much faster than last year around this time. For comparison, we filed I-129F exactly one year ago today and I did not receive the K-1 visa until February 21 this year.

Unfortunately we booked everything already however we can move the dates if we need to, the vendors are accommodating. The prices doubled a month after we booked the venue and they pretty much doubled at all the venues in the area.

 

I’m hoping we can push it back a bit or maybe it will go through in time. (The planning has been stressful enough on the fiancé especially with the long distance and having to fly here to handle planning).

[stacyt 209]

I sent my package in early Jan 2018 and I received NOA2 in August. I was able to get to the US on September 19, 2018. This is considering I did medical before my package was at the embassy, and I had my interview on the next day after it arrived, and flew out 3 days after that. You can shift my timeline by a month to have an idea. I think planning a wedding for Aug is extremely risky, you never know what kind of delay you can run into

[Kyle89 4]

17 minutes ago, stacyt said:

I sent my package in early Jan 2018 and I received NOA2 in August. I was able to get to the US on September 19, 2018. This is considering I did medical before my package was at the embassy, and I had my interview on the next day after it arrived, and flew out 3 days after that. You can shift my timeline by a month to have an idea. I think planning a wedding for Aug is extremely risky, you never know what kind of delay you can run into

I appreciate your help about how to speed it up by a month. I’ll talk to my fiancé about that. She’s still waiting on the package to arrive. I’m not sure how long it normally takes for the package to arrive (unless I’m totally mistaken and they don’t send you a package of information, they send it to the embassy instead. It’s a first for both of us and we have no assistance of any kind). 

 

She has her heart set on August however I’m sure I can talk to her to push it back since everything isn’t ready yet. 

[C90 376]

1 hour ago, Kyle89 said:

Hello everyone,

 

I’m the petitioner, my fiancé is Canadian. We filed in December of 2018. We have set everything up to get married in August of 2019. We have only received our NOA1. 

 

I’m thinking we will have to push the wedding back and send out new invitations and everything however I don’t want to have her freaking out yet, but I haven’t been able to reach anyone at USCIS to get a timeline on a decision for the K-1. 

Never plan anything with K1. There's so many people who can tell you they lost $$$$$ because they planned a wedding, payed the location and didn't get their visa in time for whatever reason. Even when you get NOA2, you don't know how quick you'll get an interview, how long AP takes and how long it takes to get your passport with visa after the interview.

 

If you can get the money back, I would inform the location that you might not make it and see if you can cancel, say, 1 month before the wedding if necessary OR if you can change the date 1 month before the original date if necessary. If not, there's nothing you can do but wait and hope everything is ready in time. 

[Kyle89 4]

10 minutes ago, C90 said:

Never plan anything with K1. There's so many people who can tell you they lost $$$$$ because they planned a wedding, payed the location and didn't get their visa in time for whatever reason. Even when you get NOA2, you don't know how quick you'll get an interview, how long AP takes and how long it takes to get your passport with visa after the interview.

 

If you can get the money back, I would inform the location that you might not make it and see if you can cancel, say, 1 month before the wedding if necessary OR if you can change the date 1 month before the original date if necessary. If not, there's nothing you can do but wait and hope everything is ready in time. 

Thankfully they will let us move the date, they’ve done international weddings before. They said if we haven’t heard a month before to just let them know and they will push it back for us and keep the same fee. Thankfully is all in the contract as well. 

[MeghanK 629]

For Montreal the timeline to interview right now is about 2-3 months after it gets to the consulate. So that's about 3-4 months from NOA2. Also consider extra time for potentially long administrative processing. Definitely keep an open mind about an August wedding. It might happen on a totally perfect and faster than average timeline. It's good that they will let you be flexible on wedding dates. 

 

[JFH 12,190]

*~*~*non-procedural question moved from “process and procedures” to “progress reports”*~*~*

[stacyt 209]

3 hours ago, MeghanK said:

For Montreal the timeline to interview right now is about 2-3 months after it gets to the consulate. So that's about 3-4 months from NOA2. Also consider extra time for potentially long administrative processing. Definitely keep an open mind about an August wedding. It might happen on a totally perfect and faster than average timeline. It's good that they will let you be flexible on wedding dates. 

 

agreed, consulate time plays a huge role! some embassies are better than others. I was able to have my interview a day after they received my package, zero time lost so my timeline from applying to arrival was only 8 months. If Montreal takes 2-3 months to sched interview, this can become 11 months 

[nastra30 2,288]

Do not plan and pay for wedding before having actual K1 visa is in hand. Though we all hope for smooth process, sometimes things at USCIS and USEM don't go smoothly according to our expectations causing unnecessary delays for future planned events. You can certainly do pre-planning but setting actual dates and paying for things is not a good idea.

Edited March 31, 2019 by nastra30

[Loren Y 2,755]

Looks like your only hangup is going to be the consulate in Montreal. From NOA2 approval our K1 was thru the NVC in 2 weeks, had my case number the day before it left there by calling just on a whim. was able to get medical done the next week, then for some reason got an interview scheduled like a week after consulate got it, but then caught a little more time in AP, but still had visa in passport almost exactly 8 Months after the Filing date. Filed in December 2017, had visa in the passport in hand in August, and that was by pushing everything I could. We were able to download packet 3 and 4 from the embassy website, and kinda push things ahead if you were ready with everything. SO I think it is going to be close, but with what people are saying about the Consulate in Montreal, you may miss the date. I hope not, I would like to see the times start moving along faster for the K1 again. It is the worst part of the whole process. Right now we are doing AOS, but I don't really care if it takes 12-14 months for the green card, because we are together and see each other every day, so the wait doesn't really matter, but they should do something to speed things up some for all the processes. I'm used to red tape and government time lines, but the ones for forms to be processed and approved need to be sped up in my opinion, but will not happen because there is not enough people to get something on a ballot to actually make a change. Or there is no one able to rally to get the signatures and votes needed to do it, maybe one day, but my worry is it is going to get so backed up and bad they are just going to put a stop to new applicants until they get caught up and shut down immigration for a year or 2 to give them time to process the over 300,000 backed up applications.