David & I headed down to Croydon on Tuesday the 8th to get my FLR. We got in line at 6:30, got in the building at 8:15 (we were number 206). Got up to the window at 10:45 and walked out of there with my (surprisingly ugly - why couldn't it be as pretty as my fiancee visa?) stamp at 11:15!
The lady behind the window said that as of April 1 (only a week before I got it!) the law had changed, and FLR visas are now good for
two years and not one, but it only applies to visas received since April 2st, not old ones. So I don't have to go down there for another 2 years!
The process was painless except for one minor blip when the lady behind the counter (hereby known as LBC) wanted to see David's bank statements. I told her we didn't need them, and asked her to show me on the form where it said we did. She couldn't, she apologized, and we got our visa.
Filling out the form could NOT have been any easier, thanks to me already having a fiancee visa issued in Chicago. There's a part on the form that basically says "Before arriving in the UK did you get a fiancee visa? If so, skip the next 15 questions". And those 15 questions were all the hard ones! So basically my fiancee visa was proof that he could support me financially, etc, as they wouldn't have given it to me to begin with unless they felt confident I wouldn't go on public funds. At the end of the day all I showed them was our two passports, our marriage certificate, and the filled out form. That's it. I'm still really glad I brought loads of other @just in case@ documentation, in case LBC decided to be grouchy - but at the end of the day we didn't need them.
I was planning on going alone, but the thought of me carrying our birth certificates, passports, marriage certificate etc... all by my lonesome in a ruck sack, then getting on a series of trains, tubes etc to get back home - well, I would have been scared the whole time of being robbed. It's like I had our lives in an A4 sized folder - so David came along for "protection".
Anyway - gotta go! I'm at the library with 20 minutes of internet, am heading off for a 2 week break in America, then will be back and on the hunt for a job. Blech!
