Marriage Certificate

I'll be popping over the California in June for two weeks to holiday with the girlfriend then bring her back to England to marry and settle.

We were planning on the fiancee visa route, but after seeing a few posts here I am now curious about getting married over there and apply for the spouse visa.  This should save time, hassle and money when we get back to the UK. 

We have called a few County Clerk offices around Los Angeles and it seems to take 3-10 days to get the marriage certificate back after the ceremony.

From experience, does anyone think we will be able to get everything done in two weeks ?
Does anyone know of a County Clerks office in California that can return the marriage certificate same / next day ?

Thanks, Lillyshark's other half.

We got married in Half Moon Bay, CA (San Mateo County) we took our marriage certificate in ourselves (our friend married us and he already signed his part and our witness) and got a certified marriage license in the same trip!

Jennredd,
Did you get a certified marriage certificate on the same trip ?  (How long did it take ?)

Alternatively, does anyone know if we can use the solemnized marriage licence for the visa application ? (before we hand it back to the County Clerk)

sorry, think I might have wrote that backwards, certificate..license...one is before the other, whichever, we got the certified marriage certificate the same day we brought in the signed license after the wedding.  It took 20 minutes.

Chris and I are getting married in Boston and we just talked the person who is marrying us alarm bells went off after reading some of the stories on here about the certif and he said he would take it in the same day as soon as we are married so we can then go the next day to the consulate, but he would normally send it off and it takes about a week or so to get sent to you.

Good job we looked on here and thought to ask.

good luck

I have tried a few County Offices around LA, the only one coming back with anything positive is Ventura.  If we get the licence and ceremony in the same office we should get the certificate back in 20 mins.   Which is just what we need 

I am just waiting for him to get back to me to confirm some details.

If we complete the visa form online, once we get the marriage certificate, should we be able to get an appointment the next day ? 

We have been watching the site (immigration) for about 6 weeks the appointments seem to go really quickly so we are going to book for the day after the wedding or the day after that its a real pain they also only seem to have so many slots open as well you seem to need to book close to the date of you want your appointment.

It seems the consulates only release dates to make appts about 2 weeks in advance. I would suggest if you know what date you want to go, to wait until just 2 weeks before and then make the appointment. They do fill up fast and you likely wouldnt get an appt for the very next day.

Hopefully that helps some, unfortunately I dont know anything about marriage certs/licenses in CA

Good luck!


Katrina