HungNhi

Sorry about that 
I do hope they'd pick up the pace for everyone, especially those with travel plans. They should do a volunteer thing to help them get caught up. Im sure there are many who would be willing to spend a day or two helping them get organized. For example, sort all the applications by date order, and do them from oldest to newest. That'd also let them forecast expected time better than what they're currently doing.

Hey Everyone, we passed the interview!
I was there with my fiancee upon going in, then was asked to take a seat. The layout is very similar to a dmv. she stood in line to get her finger print and a number. The first time they call your number, they have you hand in all the paperwork they asked for. They girl at the counter asked if we had any children together or anything (we dont). The second time they call your number is when you go up to another window to interview (we expected to go into a room to be interrogated/interviewed, but this wasn't the case). I went up with my fiancee the second time as well and there were two people behind the glass. A vietnamese lady and an american guy who spoke decent vietnamese.
First he asked me where I was from, if i was crazy for living in New York since its cold. I told him about the snow storms we just had and he said hes so thankful for living in Vietnam. Then he gave me a little background on himself and how much he loved Vietnam. It was a pretty laid-back conversation. After a few laughs about getting fat in Vietnam, he had me sit down to interview my fiancee.
I was looking and listening to him interview my fiancee the best i could, but from what i saw/heard it was more of a conversation than an interview. However my fiancee did say he asked the following questions:
1. 'How did your fiancee get to the US?'
2. 'How did you meet?'
3. 'Do you think you'll be happy in the US?'
Other than that, he just said congratulations, you guys passed your interview. Chuc em hanh phuc, and have a good weekend.
Note all of this was in Vietnamese, but i dont know how to translate hanh phuc very well. lol
We then had to exit and register the address to send the passport and visa to, and that was that.
Other notes:
When you leave, be careful, the people across the street will try to trick you to get money, or even try to pick pocket you. The guards told us this upon leaving and sure enough, some guy came up and said we HAD to give him the two white paper so he can check it for us (BS). We called a taxi and went straight to get some food since we were both starving.
Overall, we got there at 7:15ish and left at 11:20ish, but the interview lasted about 10 minutes. It was extremely nerve wrecking though. We saw/observed 8 out of 10 girls get the blue slips and crying as they left while we were waiting, and our heart goes out to all of them.
On a last note, dont worry about arriving too early, they pretty much just go in the order the stack of applications is in.
If anyone has any questions, we'd be glad to answer them.
Edit: They didnt ask for a timeline, history, or any of that. Didn't check my income, tax papers, and i didnt have a co-sponsor. Pretty much just looked at 3 pictures of us and that was it.
HungNhi

My wife did obtain a Marriageability Certificate (Single Status Certificate) for her interview but the consulate never asked for it. Heck, the CO only asked to see 5-6 photos that we took before our engagement. Nothing else. I brought to VN two huge expandable folders with everything we had (texts, Viber chats, emails, photos, proofs, credit card statements, Western Union statements, boarding passes, etc.) and we ended up burning everything the day before we flew back to the States (wife did not own a shredder lol).

My fiancee just did that last couple week ..Here how she doing
1. Go to uy ban Phuong get a form
2.Fill out and let khu pho truong sign
3.Go back uy ban phuong they sign and stamp
Remember on that form ,it have a question the reason (ly do) to do the singles status : ..And wirting like this
Bổ túc hồ sơ xuất cảnh....
And she got the paper next day ,without go to So Tu Phap or interview ....
My fiancee in Sg now for her vaccines and medical exam at IOM ,will update what going on .....Hope that help ,HUNGNHI

This is what I read
"Each Embassy requires that your fiancee bring her passport, birth certificate and police record. If your fiancee was previously married, she must bring an original document showing the marriage was terminated. In some countries it is the practice of the "local government" to issue a Certificate of No Marriage. This document shows that your fiancee has always been single. If your fiancee's country issues such a document the consulate will want to see it".

I ran into the same problem as you. If you're on a laptop or desktop it won't show the box to write the 500 characters, but it appears on your smart phone. I also didn't resubmit anything, just my last 4 of my social. When I inquired on my laptop, I just put a few spaces after my email and wrote my last 4 after that. When I submitted an inquiry a second time, because they spelled my fiancee's name incorrectly, I used my smart phone and typed in my last 4 in the message box that's available.

I would wait about a week. If you don't get it by then, go to the website I listed below and enter all of the required information correctly. Then choose "I have not received my immigrant/fiancee visa instruction package" from the drop down menu. Once the consulate receives this, they should send you the Packet 3 instruction letter via email.
http://hochiminh.usconsulate.gov/contact/ivinquiries.html

Yes it call So Tu Phap ...My Fiancee live in Nha Trang so she will do that in So Tu Phap Tinh Khanh Hoa.Hope that help

The reason for 7 instead of 4 is simple. When youre at 7 months, he will (hopefully) have his NOA2 already. You wont be telling HIM to be patient. At 7, You will be next up for an approval, so the person you will tell to be patient will be someone who has waited less than you (although not you, since your case will be expedited. I wouldnt be surprised if you got your NOA2 before him and me). But now imagine someone with almost 50% less wait time than you tells you to be patient. That assumes you havent been already, or that you need a reminder of how helpless you are in the situation.
Analogy of the situation: Imagine youre in a line at the grocery store, buying food for your hungry family. There are only 2 lines, but one is for people who wore strictly blue shoes with white laces that day, so the line you and most other people are in gets longer and longer. Youve waited a while, hundreds, maybe even a thousand people have been checked out and its almost your turn to go up, maybe just a hundred more people to go. Then you look in the back of the line, and you see the manager pull someone out of line, who has only been in line for maybe a hundred checkouts. He/She gets pulled to the front of the line that you are in because the manager feels they need to go home faster than you. While coming up, the special case says, be patient, its almost your turn. //
People will all react differently to the situation we are all in. I stopped coming on here as often after seeing people from the Philippines and those in California worry about not getting their NOA2 4 weeks in, or people coming on to say "OMG fast approval, only 10 days at TSC" or whatever because quite frankly, those posts were a bit disheartening when you compare the situation. Had they created a thread for quick approvals or special case questions, I would have just not clicked on those threads, but instead people kept creating posts with vague titles. Just my $.02

The reason for 7 instead of 4 is simple. When youre at 7 months, he will (hopefully) have his NOA2 already. You wont be telling HIM to be patient. At 7, You will be next up for an approval, so the person you will tell to be patient will be someone who has waited less than you (although not you, since your case will be expedited. I wouldnt be surprised if you got your NOA2 before him and me). But now imagine someone with almost 50% less wait time than you tells you to be patient. That assumes you havent been already, or that you need a reminder of how helpless you are in the situation.
Analogy of the situation: Imagine youre in a line at the grocery store, buying food for your hungry family. There are only 2 lines, but one is for people who wore strictly blue shoes with white laces that day, so the line you and most other people are in gets longer and longer. Youve waited a while, hundreds, maybe even a thousand people have been checked out and its almost your turn to go up, maybe just a hundred more people to go. Then you look in the back of the line, and you see the manager pull someone out of line, who has only been in line for maybe a hundred checkouts. He/She gets pulled to the front of the line that you are in because the manager feels they need to go home faster than you. While coming up, the special case says, be patient, its almost your turn. //
People will all react differently to the situation we are all in. I stopped coming on here as often after seeing people from the Philippines and those in California worry about not getting their NOA2 4 weeks in, or people coming on to say "OMG fast approval, only 10 days at TSC" or whatever because quite frankly, those posts were a bit disheartening when you compare the situation. Had they created a thread for quick approvals or special case questions, I would have just not clicked on those threads, but instead people kept creating posts with vague titles. Just my $.02

The reason for 7 instead of 4 is simple. When youre at 7 months, he will (hopefully) have his NOA2 already. You wont be telling HIM to be patient. At 7, You will be next up for an approval, so the person you will tell to be patient will be someone who has waited less than you (although not you, since your case will be expedited. I wouldnt be surprised if you got your NOA2 before him and me). But now imagine someone with almost 50% less wait time than you tells you to be patient. That assumes you havent been already, or that you need a reminder of how helpless you are in the situation.
Analogy of the situation: Imagine youre in a line at the grocery store, buying food for your hungry family. There are only 2 lines, but one is for people who wore strictly blue shoes with white laces that day, so the line you and most other people are in gets longer and longer. Youve waited a while, hundreds, maybe even a thousand people have been checked out and its almost your turn to go up, maybe just a hundred more people to go. Then you look in the back of the line, and you see the manager pull someone out of line, who has only been in line for maybe a hundred checkouts. He/She gets pulled to the front of the line that you are in because the manager feels they need to go home faster than you. While coming up, the special case says, be patient, its almost your turn. //
People will all react differently to the situation we are all in. I stopped coming on here as often after seeing people from the Philippines and those in California worry about not getting their NOA2 4 weeks in, or people coming on to say "OMG fast approval, only 10 days at TSC" or whatever because quite frankly, those posts were a bit disheartening when you compare the situation. Had they created a thread for quick approvals or special case questions, I would have just not clicked on those threads, but instead people kept creating posts with vague titles. Just my $.02

Unfortunately it doesnt mean your chances of an RFE are lower. It just means they haven't touched your case yet. sorry, but hang in there! good luck and maybe you'll be an anomaly with an earlier approval.

was your status updated on the site? thanks.

It looks like they have not gone through all the transferred applications yet. I am following the conversation in the "transferred" forum and people are still getting RFE's and approvals and those are the April/May folks. I think we can realistically hope for end of November approvals though.
Think about it guys and gals, this is the LAST Diwali/Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah/NYE (sorry if I ommitted a holiday pertaining to your culture, I don't know them all) you will be spending without your better half. This time next year we are ALL going to be happily married and maybe some of us will be parents even!
Let's get excited for all the amazing things to come )

Haha really? I thought about printing more since I read people printing out more than 100. But i figured, they may want to see some pictures I haven't sent in yet, at the interview, so I settled with 76.
I have been keeping very busy (full time day job, freelancing contract, and i just picked up some consultant work doing sales analysis) but somehow always find time to talk to her for an hour or two before bed and about 30 minutes before she goes to sleep. We are definitely in this together, and are keeping eachother motivated. I'll definitely be looking into the packet 3&4 docs soon though. Thanks!!
Thank you, best of luck to you as well!!

siennaslammer:

We've gotten to know eachother for over a year now. I accidentally put met instead of "started dating exclusively" and even then, my flight left in july. We really met eachother in May. We had no intentions of getting a full blown marriage and were actually just excited to see eachother after the long distance, but with her parents being old fashioned, she was not allowed to hang out with me unless our parents met and mine officially asked for permission for us to start dating. Something about being prejudged by people in the neighborhood. Thats when our parents talked about it and announced to us what their intentions were. Believe me, both of us believed it was WAY too early to get married, but if youre familiar with vietnamese culture, you do NOT want to argue with "adults" (nguoi lon). Especially when their revelation of intention is actually presented as a mapped out schedule. lol. Anyways, after seeking a good date from a monk, we had our engagement ceremony (dam hoi) and had our marriage ceremony scheduled (which is on hold for now).
I want the opportunity to be with her as soon as possible, which is why I want to go back to the US to start the k1 process immediately, regardless of whether we are moving fast or not because love doesn't have to be logical. I appreciate your advice for us to slow down, but she is all i think about when i am back in the states, while im working, eating, from dust to dawn, shes always on my mind and i dont want us to be 10k+ miles apart anymore. Furthermore, I discussed with her and planned for the k1 process to take a year (if not more) for her to get approved (anything earlier would be a bonus) and we agreed that she would stay in vietnam for another few months until i am approved for a few weeks vacation and come back to pick her up. That would put us at 2.5 years in our relationship. Overall, im just hoping she will be by my side without us worrying that time is going by too quickly by 2016.
I will sit down with her tonight and map out our next 12 months as this sounds like a great idea. I already saved as much of our texts, chats, ect from when we first met, but i wasn't able to save everything since that was almost a year ago. As for pictures, we only have ~50. We didn't take plenty of picture daily like we should have, but we did take 1 or 2 every few days. We were just busy enjoying being by eachothers side and so we didn't even think about taking too many pictures.
Thanks for the clarification on the Annual income as well! that was what i was really concerned about, but it seems that i should be fine. I have a salaried position lined up for when i come back starting at 30k + bonuses (~42hrs/week including 1hr lunch) and also have a part time job lined up that i can make my own hours at, but that will only pay 10$ or so which means i will make the poverty level just fine.
Thanks again everyone for the replies! Ive been reading everyones stories and advice and its been very helpful.
Hopefully this reply doesnt sound rushed, but Nhi and I are hungry and i told her we would go eat about 10 minutes ago, right after i finish this one post