Supporting Documents

My husband and I are applying for a spousal visa at the LA consulate in about 2 to 3 weeks.  I've read about what to include but I've taken advice from spouses from lots of different countries, and after reading this forum about applying for visas in America, I want to know if I've gone way overboard.  So any advice or comments would be really greatly appreciated.

As the background - I'm 21 and American and my husband's 24 and British.  He's working freelance and we didn't meet the minimum income in the first two bank statements, but will in the third.  He has contracts over the next few months proving the income will stay consistent, and I was also just offered a part-time job at the company where his mum works, so we'll get to include the letter from my future employer as well.  We know it's not recommended to apply when the first two months didn't meet the minimum income, but we only have £300 a month expenses living with his parents, and we can easily prove that from April onwards we'll have more than £94.95 left after bills each week.

So, with that in mind, here are the supporting documents we were thinking of including:


Application
Biometrics

50 photos of us together
30 photos from the wedding
5 wedding / engagement cards, 1 menu from the wedding dinner
Skype logs and email inbox screenshots
Phone bills showing our calls to each other
6 emails to each other; one every few months
Timeline of our relationship
Letters of support from both of our parents and both of our best friends
Council tax and water bill with both our names to prove we lived together
Ticket stubs for trips we took together
Post-it-notes in my passport showing the stamps I got while traveling with him
Sponsor letter from my husband

3 months of bank statements for both our accounts
6 months pay slips from his old job
Invoices for past 6 months freelance work, showing total income
Contracts for coming 5 months freelance work
Statement from his parents about living with them, paying rent, size of the house
15 photos of the common areas in the house, plus ones of our bedroom
Latest mortgage statement from his parents
Offer of part-time employment for me once I enter the UK
Budget sheet showing expected income, outgoings, and savings next 6 months
Husband's CV
My CV

My passport
Husband's passport (or notarized copy; haven't decided yet)
Marriage certificate
2 passport photos of myself

Photocopies of everything except the photos, in the hope of them returning the originals.


Thank you in advance for your advice.

I think you may have gone overboard with the photos, you really don't need more than 10.  I also don't think you need your wedding cards or the menu from the dinner, your marriage certificate proves you're married.  Letters from your parents and friends aren't necessary, except for the one from his parents saying you can live with him.  You could probably trim the number of pictures of the house as well.  And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you only need to include one passport-size photo? 

I completely understand the desire to provide as much proof as possible, I was the same way, but now that the madness has passed, I think I sent too much.  I doubt the ECOs even look at most of it. 

I totally agree with Historyenne (she is generally right, afterall!)

You do not need 80 pics - thats totally overkill.  5-10 will be fine. 
You also do not need any proof of your wedding other than the certificate.
I have always seen everyone including 2 passport photos and they usually come in a set when you get them done.
No need to include letters of support (except the one where his parents state that you can live there)
You also dont need a specific timeline of your relationship - you can just give a brief overview in your cover letter/letter of intent.

I agree. That many photos is unnecessary! I submitted about 10 photos, spanning from 2003 (first meeting) to present. 2 were wedding photos.

As historyenne said, the extra letters are also unnecessary... Aside from that, I would say your list is still very very extensive, but not necessarily overboard. Better to provide more information than not enough!

Oh, and (as historyenne said, again... god she knows her stuff, huh? ) the marriage certificate is plenty to prove that you are married.

If you include too many things like photos and such, the ECO will hardly glance at them--same for wedding invitations and menus. They'll know you got married just by the certificate, so maybe a handful of photos is sufficient without boring the ECO to tears--same goes with people who include emails, or chatlogs You might not even need the photos of his parents' house if they have some sort of paperwork that mentions how many bedrooms there are, since that seems to be one of the major things ECOs look at in terms of accommodations.

That is generally right for US nationals where there has been no previous breach of the rules, but just to add a little disclaimer for any lurkers that these documents are sometimes needed.

Vicky

Any reason you need support letters from your best friends? Or for that matter, both sets of parents? You only require one from your spouse.

They need one from one set of parents for the accommodation evidence.

Vicky

They need one from one set of parents for the accommodation evidence.

Vicky

Oops, I'm sorry, I got confused. From the way she listed it, it seemed like she was getting letters of support from both sets of parents on top of the accomodation letter from the spouse's parents.

Yes, I think she is!


Vicky

I had been planning on including 4 separate support letters but you've all convinced me it's not necessary.    So I'll remove the 4 support letters, the wedding cards and menu, the timeline, and pare the photos down to 10 general, 5 wedding, and 5 house (and fewer if I can manage).

I'll make sure to leave in the letter from his parents about the accomodation (and substitute a letter about the rooms for the 5 house photos if we can get ahold of one).

I'm inclined to leave in as much evidence about income and employment as possible since I think it's worth it in our situation.  But I am a bit worried about the chat logs and things since we have a ton and they could get boring really fast.  I was going to include basic screenshots of the ~800 emails/gmail chats, skype calls, about 12 months of phone bills, and the 6 emails spread out.  I can cut it down to two emails if that would be better, but since the others are just the logs instead of conversations I don't know of a way to make them smaller except to not include them.  Any suggestions?

Thank you all for your help so far.  You've been amazing.  I hope no one minds if I edit my original post as I make changes so it stays up to date.

Don't include chat logs, the ECOs aren't interested in the intimate details of your lives.  We included e-mail inbox screenshots, skype call history screenshots, and our Facebook walls that showed our status as married to each other, and comments from our friends congratulating us on our marriage.  In retrospect, I don't think the Facebook pages were necessary. 

Your income and employment evidence is not excessive.

About the list, would you mind cutting and pasting it into later posts as you change things, so we don't have to bounce back and forth between pages?  That would be easier than if you just amended the original post.   

I think it has already been discussed on here that chat logs aren't really worth it.  There is no way of proving that the people chatting are the two of you.

I did send a screenshot of our emails.  I had no pictures before the weddings because we always travelled by ourselves, so there was no one else to take a photo.  

Good luck with your application.  This past weekend we were looking for my wife's naturalisation certificate and we came across it in the complete pack of supporting docs we used when we applied for my spousal visa at the NY consulate a few years ago.  I can't say that I remember the ECO looking at any of it besides the passports and marriage cert.  I don't even think he took the photos out of the folder.

Best to be prepared though...

I had been planning on including 4 separate support letters but you've all convinced me it's not necessary.    So I'll remove the 4 support letters, the wedding cards and menu, the timeline, and pare the photos down to 10 general, 5 wedding, and 5 house (and fewer if I can manage).

I'll make sure to leave in the letter from his parents about the accomodation (and substitute a letter about the rooms for the 5 house photos if we can get ahold of one).

I'm inclined to leave in as much evidence about income and employment as possible since I think it's worth it in our situation.  But I am a bit worried about the chat logs and things since we have a ton and they could get boring really fast.  I was going to include basic screenshots of the ~800 emails/gmail chats, skype calls, about 12 months of phone bills, and the 6 emails spread out.  I can cut it down to two emails if that would be better, but since the others are just the logs instead of conversations I don't know of a way to make them smaller except to not include them.  Any suggestions?

Thank you all for your help so far.  You've been amazing.  I hope no one minds if I edit my original post as I make changes so it stays up to date.

As historyenne said, leave out the chatlogs. I know the temptation to overwhelm with documents is really high, but as I've said before, this is a pretty low hurdle to overcome for Americans. So between the pictures, the visa stamps and the phone bills, you're probably safe leaving out the screenshots altogether.

And yeah, just send everything you got re: finances. I basically took every scrap of paper with any numbers on it when I went. Just in case.