What is the first step towards getting a visa?

my bf and i are both so confused and different website seem to contradict each other.  in april we will have our 2 yr anniversary so i want to move to england by the end of the summer.  so i figured that in april i will start the process of getting a visa but i dont even  know what my first step is. is there anyone i can contact and get an informational booklet sent to my house, lol. any help will be very appreciated.

are you engaged to be married within the next 6 months? if so you can apply for your fiancee visa...

you should look at the websites specifically devoted to this topic...I amsure you will get much better advice from the other long timers here
I may be facing this prospect myself in the near future so I wish you luck

can you give some more info so that we can give specialized advice?

1- have you and your boyfriend lived together for the last 2 years?  Can you prove this, with leases, bills, etc?
2- are you two engaged?
3- is your boyfriend a UK citizen? 
4- if not, will you two be moving b/c work related moving?

good luck with it all- keep asking pointed questions and i'm sure you'll get great responses here.

my bf is english and we have not lived together for 2 yrs. we have only been dating for 2 yrs in april. he has been to visit me once i have been been to england 3 times. infact i just got back last night from a 4 week stay. we are not engaged, we dont want to get married. my bf, simon, told me that theres a couples of partners visa i can get once we have been together for 2 yrs.  we have discussed marriage as the last possible option if it comes down to it but neither one of us want to join the fools club as we call it, lol. no offense to anyone.  he said he was reading that you have to have lived together for 2 yrs in order to apply but that doesnt make much sense, we cant live together if i dont have a visa to stay in england. so we are both  very confused about that.   with all the time added up that we have been physicially together its only like 4 months. its not much i know,  but when we both have a job and all that stuff its hard to find time to go stay in another country. im sure a lot of you know what im saying. i was also wondering, my bf is about to take out a loan to buy a house, he has a really good job working for nestle but do you think thats gonna be a problem? will they hold that loan against him?

You can only qualify for the unmarried partner visa if you've lived together for two years (like if you'd been here on a work permit or he was legally living in the US with you).  If you aren't coming over as a student or on a work permit, a fiancee' or spousal visa would be the other options. 

well a work visa is not an option, i dont even have a job at the moment im about to move to another state to go to school. a student visa is not an option either.  like i said, marriage is only a DONT - HAVE - ANY- OTHER-OPTIONS option, one that we may have to take. i will be 22 in 3 weeks and even now i just cant see myself in a wedding dress, lol.  i never could.  The idea of being married scares me and my bf too. so i dunno what we are gonna do. im just tired of being away from him.

What Lola said.  The only other thing I can add, since it seems you're not going the fiancée or spouse route, is that perhaps you qualify for citizenship of another EU member state through your ancestry?  Then, you'd be able to move to the UK and work legally.

well i dunno my ancestory on my mom or dads side,  well i know that my dad comes from a german family but i dunno how far back or anything like that.  so i dont think thats really an option either.

It's not a good idea to plan on the Unmarried Partners visa being around for too much longer.  By the time you qualify - say 20087, the smart money is betting that it will already be history...

you say you're 22.  have you recently graduated from a US university?

It's not a good idea to plan on the Unmarried Partners visa being around for too much longer.  By the time you qualify - say 20087, the smart money is betting that it will already be history...

20087? what are you talking about?

no im about to go to school in texas.  but its not a real college. its called the job corps and i will live on campus and get my high school diploma ( cause i dropped out of high school). once i have my diploma, i will be taking  classes in business office technoligies. learning computers and that sort of stuff.  i also go out and get a job while im there, a job doing something that im going to school for you know.  i was thinking it would be cool if i could find a job that would have a office in england and i could get a work visa but i doubt that would work. and becuase its not an actual universatiy or college i cant get a student visa.

but i was wondering if the time we have spent together visiting eachother counts for living together time. anyone know? cause my bf was just saying we should look into it and i can just get an extended holiday visa until we have 2 yrs added up.  i think i remember reading somewhere before that visit time does count. i was living with him for 2 months over the summer.

What we did is had a very quiet ceremony - just us and a few friends at the registrar, and the pub afterwards. I got my white dress on sale at Debenhams and he wore a suit and we looked excellent and had a great time. The big honkin' ceremony with all the family will be next year, by which time we'll have been married for a while and well settled in together.  You can just wear a nice dress - it doesn't need to be white - for your small (and inexpensive) ceremony.  And it feels lovely to be married too

What we did is had a very quiet ceremony - just us and a few friends at the registrar, and the pub afterwards. I got my white dress on sale at Debenhams and he wore a suit and we looked excellent and had a great time. The big honkin' ceremony with all the family will be next year, by which time we'll have been married for a while and well settled in together.  You can just wear a nice dress - it doesn't need to be white - for your small (and inexpensive) ceremony.  And it feels lovely to be married too

well thats defenitly what we would do.

20087? what are you talking about?

This was obviously a typo!!!!