Giving notice -- no passport due to appeal -- other options?

Hi all,

My fiancé and I got engaged in August 2013 and our wedding date is 6th April 2015. Except we still haven't heard back from the Home Office regarding my appeal, so I do not have my passport.

We need to give notice to Hanley (Stoke-on-Trent) before 1st March as they would require a Wedding Visa after that date for us to marry. However, they are requiring that I have a passport to give notice. Unlike British citizens, they claim that I cannot simply provide an original copy of my birth certificate and an original copy of my mother's birth certificate to give notice. Apparently I also cannot provide my UK driving license, either.

We have talked to 2-3 different people at the 3 closest registry offices to us with no dice.

Anybody know of any loopholes? 

We have been told of the possibility of the Home Office sending certified copies and have already got the ball rolling on this, but the registry offices claim that this is a temporary stop gap and they would need the original passport prior in order to let us give notice.

Is there any other evidence at other registry offices that people have recently used to give notice? Should we keep asking, or is there no hope?

At this rate, we can't even get married on our wedding date... despite such a long engagement, friends and family having already bought tickets and us being together for 11.5 years. We thought that we had waited long enough as is to get hitched! 

Any help or ideas would be extremely appreciated!

What are you appealing?

FLR(M) Unmarried partner. They claimed we didn't have sufficient evidence that we made enough to reach/exceed the income threshold. We very easily do and did. The guidance notes were ambiguous, though.

Our solicitor has assured us that we wouldn't be their first clients to win an appeal of this type, nor would we be the last to file for one on the same basis. We have no doubt that the appeal will be successful, but we don't have the 18 week wait time! This was my fifth visa application and my first refusal... If I knew it was going to take so long, I would've bit the bullet and paid the extra for Same Day service to save the stress and the unknown.

Is your current visa still valid? If I were you, I would withdraw the appeal then apply for FLR(M) again after you're married. Appeals always take longer than fresh applications, and if you didn't include the proper financial evidence, an appeal is unlikely to succeed despite what your lawyer says.

Unfortunately not. I submitted application in September and my visa expired in October.

An appeal will only be successful if the original application had all the correct evidence and the case worker made an error in the refusal.  Otherwise you should simply reapply.

Why not withdraw the appeal, get married in the US, and then have a "blessing" in the UK on your scheduled date?  Otherwise you will likely not be able to get legally married in April.

An appeal takes roughly a year.  Your lawyer should be telling you all of this.