AndrewF

Fiance had her interview on the 11th, was approved, and got her Visa delivered Monday the 17th.  Today we just arrived back in the US
 
This website has been an immense help.  I hope everyone is as lucky as we have been!  

I hope everything will be fine because I already bought non refundable tickets😣

Fiance had her interview on the 11th, was approved, and got her Visa delivered Monday the 17th.  Today we just arrived back in the US
 
This website has been an immense help.  I hope everyone is as lucky as we have been!  

Prior to filing the I-129f I made 2 trips for a total of about 25 days.  Then for the interview I had made a total of 4 trips.

We did not have an engagement party.  1 of the 3 questions that the CO asked my fiance was if we had an engagement party.  My fiance said we did not have a party because we wanted to save money to buy a house the following month.  CO said ok and approved her visa.  I don't think not having an engagement party is that big of an issue and definitely would not spend a lot of $$ on one unless you wanted to.

Went to an Issued status yesterday.  Now waiting for it to get delivered!

We created a big notebook of evidence for the interview, that included a timeline, plane tickets, visa stamps, photos, Zalo chat examples, etc.  After I sat down and my fiance was interviewed alone, my fiance said the only thing the CO asked to see of the supporting evidence was some more of the Facebook print outs from the time after we were engaged.  So, based on that, I'm guessing the FB was helpful for the CO.  That said, I only submitted our FB as evidence because I'm very careful what I post (I'm an active duty Army Officer), and because I was sure it supported our application and wouldn't raise any red flags.  Depending on what you have on your social media, your mileage may vary.  
 
We submitted the I-129F on 2 JAN.  Was approved by USCIS on 12 APR.  NVC received, processed it and sent it to the HCM Consulate by 15 MAY.  Got the P3 instructions from the HCM consulate around 23 MAY (this gets mailed to the fiance).  was able to schedule her interview on 11 JUN.  So, just a tad over 6 months for the whole process which was much quicker then I anticipated.  This was with no RFEs.

I'm currently in Vietnam - just had a successful interview this last Tuesday for my fiance's K1 visa.  Has been approved and issued.  Just waiting to get it delivered.
 
On the I-129F I wrote about a paragraph with some continuation sentences in Section 8 explaining the circumstances of our meeting in person.  In addition, I attached 18 pages of supporting documents.  2 pages of copies of my flight tickets (actual tickets), and receipts from the hotels/airbnb.  Then I also front-loaded by including 16 pages of screen shots from my FB and her FB pages which traced the progress of our relationship (posts of when we were together, declaring we were in a relationship, declaring we were engaged).  
 
Here's what I found as many other people have noted.  If you provide enough evidence up front, the Consulate Officer will pretty much approve you before the interview based on what's in the I-129F.  During the interview, the CO asked me what I did for work, how we met, and how many times I had traveled to Vietnam.  Then she had me sit down and asked my fiance only 3 more cursory questions before approving her visa.  She did not dig into the additional evidence we had brought beyond looking at some more FB print outs.  The whole interview took about 5 minutes.  So, I would definitely advocate for front loading.

Awesome thanks! 

Thank you for the congratulations Jason!    It is a huge relief!  I'm very happy at how quick the whole process was.  I was expecting closer to a year at least!

Just got done with fiance's interview at the Ho Chi Minh Consulate and her K1 Visa was approved!  Process was much faster then I was expecting 6 months 9 days from filing the i-129f to being approved.  This website was an immense help!!  I hope everyone elses journey is as lucky!

Just got done with fiance's interview at the Ho Chi Minh Consulate and her K1 Visa was approved!  Process was much faster then I was expecting 6 months 9 days from filing the i-129f to being approved.  This website was an immense help!!  I hope everyone elses journey is as lucky!

It took me 2 months and 5 days from the time my I-129f was approved to get an interview date in Vietnam.  My understanding is that this is very country specific.

One other helpful hack I discovered.  After about 3 weeks, I called in to the NVC and received my Case ID #.  USCIS approved the I-129F petition on 12 APR and I happened to call in 2 May to get a status updated and they were able to give me a Case ID # because they had received and initially processed  my case on 1 May.  i got a Case ID # and an Invoice #.  My understanding is that the Invoice # is meaningless so disregard it.  Once I got my Case ID #, I checked it every day with no change.  Here is the deal with the Case ID #.
 
I was assigned a Case ID # where it was HMCYYYXXX.  HMC is the country code (Vietnam).  YYY is the Julian date (look it up on google) plus 500.  XXX is what case that day your case was assigned an ID #.  So for a made up example, say my Case ID # is HMC622001.  This means that my case was assigned an ID # on 2 May (Julian date of 122) and it was the first case assigned an ID #.  Is, if you go to the NVC website where you can check the status of your case, you can enter random case ID #s from earlier dates until you find the date where they start saying in transit or shipped.  So I could enter HMC610001 (processed 12 days prior to my hypothetical case ID #) and see if it was sent yet.  This gives you an idea at least of how long before they get around to your case.  Some cases will not be K1 Visas so if you see anything about sending in documents, disregard.  You want to see something about it was shipped or in transit.  This means they processed it and sent it to the consulate.
 
Doing this, I was able to get an idea of where they were on processing the K1 cases for my country.  

So yes, I did lock myself out of my account.  I called the customer service # where they confirmed that I had frozen my account for 24 - 72 hours.  They also confirmed my appointment was still good.

Yes.  According to the instructions for the HMC consulate you must wait and receive the instructions.  Once you receive the instructions you mail in the DS160, 2 visa photos, and passport copy.  You must wait 5 business days after mailing in that stuff for them to process it.  Then you can schedule the interview online.  

From my personal experience, my I-129F was approved on 12 APR.  The NVC received it on 1 May.  I happened to call 2 May and they gave me the new Case ID #.  They sent the case file to the Ho Chi Minh City consulate on 15 May.  Then it took the HCM consulate until 23 May to mail the instruction letter to my fiance in Ho Chi Minh City.