Hi,
Hoping I can glean from insight from the collective expertise available.
My girlfriend is American and I am a British citizen and we intend to marry and she will settle in the UK with me. She is currently in the US and I am in the UK.
I've been reading the various options and we are trying to decide which of these 2 makes most sense:
Marry in US (I'll be going over in a couple of months for a holiday with her), then do her biometric stuff, complete all the Spouse visa paperwork in the US and post that off to Sheffield. I'd then return to UK and she waits in US before then moving over to the UK.
She could come to the UK on a fiance visa and we marry pretty quickly in the UK and do the spouse visa process here. That means we are together for the post spouse process and maybe that helps with getting that completed easily.
From looking at costs it seems like option 2, the double visa process for Fiance and Spouse, would be pretty expensive (maybe about £2k per visa esp if we used an attorney for peace of mind during the app process). It would also have a lot of time pressure in terms of getting married in the UK and getting the spouse visa done as quickly as possible afterwards.
Therefore I am tending to think its actually easier for me to fly out to the US and we have a simple wedding there & kick off the spouse visa process. I come back to the UK and she waits in the US until we get the visa through. She can then join me in the UK.
Does that sound like a solid understanding of the processes? Does anyone think one is a simpler or smoother option than the other?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
Hoping I can glean from insight from the collective expertise available.
My girlfriend is American and I am a British citizen and we intend to marry and she will settle in the UK with me. She is currently in the US and I am in the UK.
I've been reading the various options and we are trying to decide which of these 2 makes most sense:
Marry in US (I'll be going over in a couple of months for a holiday with her), then do her biometric stuff, complete all the Spouse visa paperwork in the US and post that off to Sheffield. I'd then return to UK and she waits in US before then moving over to the UK.
She could come to the UK on a fiance visa and we marry pretty quickly in the UK and do the spouse visa process here. That means we are together for the post spouse process and maybe that helps with getting that completed easily.
From looking at costs it seems like option 2, the double visa process for Fiance and Spouse, would be pretty expensive (maybe about £2k per visa esp if we used an attorney for peace of mind during the app process). It would also have a lot of time pressure in terms of getting married in the UK and getting the spouse visa done as quickly as possible afterwards.
Therefore I am tending to think its actually easier for me to fly out to the US and we have a simple wedding there & kick off the spouse visa process. I come back to the UK and she waits in the US until we get the visa through. She can then join me in the UK.
Does that sound like a solid understanding of the processes? Does anyone think one is a simpler or smoother option than the other?
Thanks in advance for any replies.