hello all,
new to this site, got recommended by a very helpful member of visajourney.com. i'm a US citizen and my fiancee is a UK citizen. we're currently engaged to get married this coming June 2009 in LA. we're aware of the requirements to get married in CA (passport, marriage license, etc.) and are planning on having a private civil ceremony. unfortunately, i haven't been able to get through to any of the county offices to set a wedding ceremony date. i posted on visajourney.com about the issues of visas for the both of us and got some good feedback. just to be sure, i'd like to make sure the answers i got were all correct. maybe i should just do a list...
1. we're concerned about whether my british fiancee needs a visa to enter the US to get married. i was told that since we aren't planning on living in CA after our wedding, he can enter the US on a travel visitor, as long as he doesn't tell the immigration officer that he's there to get married. want to make sure this is true??
2. we both understand the requirements that are needed to get married in the UK. we are concerned about the financial requirements since we will both be recent graduates when we get married. at the moment, i am living in london on a student visa and just recently graduated. my fiancee is a student now and will be graduating in may this year. if we get married in CA, do we still need UK government to approve our marriage? do we still need to prove and meet the financial requirements?? i'm not 100% sure of what is the process and what documents/applications we need for me to re-enter the UK after we get married in CA. i read that we can apply for a marriage license with just our passports, but to then apply at the UK embassy for entry clearance, i would need my birth certificate (or do we both?) - i'm panicking because i can't remember where i last placed my birth cert. any advice on how to get another copy fast??
3. any advice on how to get through to someone about setting up a date for a civil ceremony in California (Preferably LA) would be great! i found a website with a company that offered instant/emergency weddings, but their fees were ridiculous. $500 for the whole thing, triple the price of what i'd pay if i arranged everything myself!
i feel like there are a few other concerns i'm forgetting, but i think this is a lot to start with for now. i'd really appreciate any help i can get!
looking forward to reading helpful responses. i'm so glad my fiancee and i decided to have a private civil ceremony, we thought of having a public ceremony with friends and family, but we decided to have something public later. i would be going crazy trying to deal with all this legal crap
and planning a wedding at the same time!
tryingtostaycalmbridetobe