jdall

My fiancee and I are filling out a marriage license application and wondering if she is considered a US resident or not. She is from Ireland and just arrived to the US on a K1 about 2 weeks ago.

Would she be already be a resident with a K1 visa?

Thanks in advance,

John & Karla

Thanks for everyone's support and advice!! Based on the conversation that took place with the Reverend, there is no room for leniency.. so we'll be looking elsewhere. Hopefully the time line won't be an issue, since we submitted i129 in December, and have the Irish Ceremony planned for June 2011.

Venessa & Tony- We're only planning a civil ceremony in the US, and my fiance would like to save as much as possible for the Irish ceremony. Regardless, her parents coming over is still an option.

Thanks again for everyone's support, it's very encouraging for both of us to know there are still options.

We have sort of a messy situation going on with the planning of our wedding ceremony and we're just wondering if anyone else is in or has been in a similar situation.

Basically, we need to get married in the US first, to comply with the terms for a K1. My Irish bride however, would prefer to have a ceremony in Ireland after a legal US marriage. After speaking with a (Protestant) Reverend, we have been told that we can not have a wedding ceremony, but only a "blessing" since we will already be married in the US. Furthermore, 1. we are required to walk up the isle together instead of her being brought up by her Father, and 2. We can not swap rings and cannot say our vows/ i do's.

This is very unfortunate for the both of us, and we're wondering if there's any way to work around this, so at least, she can be brought up by her father. I can understand if the wording of the ceremony needs to be different but it seems ridiculous to not allow the bride (or wife in our case) to be brought up by her father.

Does anyone have advice for our situation?

My fiance and I submitted the i-129f application back in early December and we're still waiting for NOA2. I presume this time line is normal, but I have a quick question while we wait.

Does anyone know a cheap way to ship personal belongings internationally? It seems that paying an 50/bag on an international flight is probably the cheapest, but I'm sure there will be more that needs to be shipped beyond what a single person can manage. We will be shipping from Dublin, Ireland to Michigan.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Sounds like the US marrige will legally carry over to Ireland if we ever decide to move. We were also wondeing because we're planning on having a ceremony in Ireland after the US civil marrige but still living in the US once we're married. My fiancee is bummed we can only have a marrige "blessing" in Ireland since we'll already be married in the states, but it's not the end of the world anyway.

Thanks for the help!!

Sorry if this is posted in the wrong area. My fiancee and I have recently applied for her K1 visa. Once we are legally married in the States, will that carry over to Ireland as well? If we decided we ever wanted to move to Ireland, would we need to marry again to make it legal outside of the US?

Great, thanks for the input!!

-John

Thanks everyone for all your help so far!

Before sending my I-129f packet out, I have a couple more questions. The letter of intent that my fiance wrote out explains how we're planning on a civil court marriage in the US within the 90 day k1 visa time frame and then we're having a wedding ceremony over in Dublin in the summer of 2011. Will the processing office not like that we're waiting until the summer of 2011 for our ceremony wedding? Would it be better if we had a ceremony wedding here in the states before our wedding in Ireland?

I guess while I'm on the subject, is a "civil court" marriage even a real thing? My fiance and I have heard of it but we haven't looked into it yet.

Thanks for any feedback,

John

Thanks for all the help : )

Thanks for the quick response

So how long does AOS usually take? The family wedding we're planning (in Ireland) isn't until June, 2011. Is it likely we'll have AOS out of they way by then?

Thanks,

John

btw, how do you add quotes to a post?

Ok, I found the California office has an estimated processing time of 4 months for the I485 AOS application.

Does that sound about right?

Thanks for the quick response

So how long does AOS usually take? The family wedding we're planning (in Ireland) isn't until June, 2011. Is it likely we'll have AOS out of they way by then?

Thanks,

John

btw, how do you add quotes to a post?

When applying for AOS, how long does it usually take to be granted advance parole? Can my wife travel abroad while she is on advance parole?

The reason I'm asking is because we're planning to do a civil court marriage here in the US on approval of the K1 visa, then traveling to Ireland for a second "family wedding" with a church, reception, honeymoon, etc. We're worried that my (soon to be) wife will not be able to leave the states if AOS has not been approved before the wedding party in Ireland. She is freaking out now, so I hope someone can offer some information that will ease both of our minds.

Thanks,

John

I'm just putting the finishing touches on my I-129f packet before mailing. I do not have any of the pages initialed yet.

What pages need my initials?

Does my foreign fiance need to initial any of the pages?

Thanks,

John

Got it. That's what I thought but just wanted to verify.

Thanks again!

John

Thank you ALL!! I decided I'm going to cut it down to a paragraph or 2 max.

One more question- Do I need to explain how we initially met in person for the first time? That was 3 summers ago, so I'm not sure if it applies to the question. We have been back and forth loads since we first met, so should I just keep it to the most recent events?

Thanks again!

-John

I started working on question 18 last night and may of gotten a little carried away. I wrote out a 1 page (single spaced) story of our recent engagement linking the story to physical evidence that I'll include in the mailing. I'm curious if I'm going about this the right way. I thought I read somewhere that its best to answer the question in the view of a third person, but I wrote in first person since it seemed more natural that way.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

John