Hey,
So me and my fiancée are thinking it would be a wise idea to start getting our visa evidence up together as we plan on getting married next May in the states!
It's a bit early to be gathering evidence now. If you aren't getting married until May 2018 and will be applying for the visa after that, you can't use any bank statements or payslips issued earlier than December 2017.
The most recent bank statement, payslip and the letter from his employer must be dated no more than 28 days before your online application date... so sometime in May 2018.
So, all you can really do right now is start organising your relationship evidence - things like make sure you save your boarding passes from your trip, and save your email/message/Skype call logs when you're apart.
Also, if he doesn't already have paper bank statements sent to him in the mail, I would have him sort that out.
Other than that, there's not really much else you can do yet.
Now receiving paper Bank statements for him to prove he earns over the minimum requirement with payslips included. With regards to the letter from employer, fan this be from his immediate manager saying that he has been employed for over 6 months (he's been at the company for 6 years now).
I believe this should be fine - although he cannot actually write the letter for another 10 months.
The letter must be dated no earlier than 28 days before you submit the online application and must state ALL of the following:
(i) the person's employment and gross annual salary;
(ii) the length of their employment;
(iii) the period over which they have been or were paid the level of salary relied upon in the application; and
(iv) the type of employment (permanent, fixed-term contract or agency).
Also, while it's good to keep the bank statements, you won't actually need any of the ones he has received yet... unless he changes his employer between December 2017 and May 2018...as they can only consider the most recent 6 months of payslips leading up to the application date.
We have plenty of pictures together from the time he has spent in the states with me, and from my previous 6 months last year and from this year. How many of these should we include?
Basically none of them. You only need 2 photos maximum. They are simply to prove you have met in person.
I would include one photo from your wedding next year and one photo from early in your relationship. That's it.
We have all our flight confirmation emails from travelling to see one another.
You really need the actual boarding passes, though if you no longer have these, the e-ticket can be used instead.
We have plenty of whatsapp messages, all the way back to the first night we met, and from the forum it seems a couple of messages a month is enough for proof of relationship. We also have made loads of calls via whatsapp but we can't access any further than February 2017 but there were plenty up to that point, so hopefully this isn't an issue.
Yeah, you only need a selection of messages - just dates/times... NO message content should be included. How many you send will depend on how long you have been together. If it's a 5-year relationship, you probably only want to show 1 message per month, but if you've only been together, say, 2 years by the time you marry, you might want to include 1 per week.
I would save all of the Whatsapp call log you can now, and then make sure you keep saving it/take screenshots of message dates over the next year.
When we first are together living in the U.K. we will be living with his parents, so we will get a letter from them saying that it's ok to stay there and there is enough space for us. Do we need to get anything else from them?
You will also need their Land Registry document, which you can download an official copy of from the Land Registry website for about £3.
Also, if they have a mortgage you can include their latest original mortgage statement, though this is only optional. However, since you won't be applying for the visa for several months, they probably won't have their latest one yet.
We haven't looked into the online application forms etc. yet, is this something we can prepare in advance? Or is it a case of fill it out when we have our marriage certificate?
There are two application forms to fill in:
- an online application, which is really just details about you
- VAF4a Appendix 2, which is a paper form you have to print and complete by hand, which is all about how you qualify for the spousal visa
You can see a paper version of the online form, along with Appendix 2 here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/application-for-uk-visa-for-family-settlement-form-vaf4aIgnore the part about Appendix 2 being for North Korea only - it is not an online form yet, so everyone has to complete it.
You can use these for reference, but it's best not to fill out the actual forms until just before you apply for the visa, because they may change between now and then.
You should not submit the online application until after you are married and have all the documents ready to mail to Sheffield for processing.
This is everything we can think of right now that we have, any advice about evidence we can gather in advance would be greatly appreciated
Lastly after we do get married we plan on taking our honeymoon which will be in America as well, but with the biometrics test and things we don't think it will be possible to apply for the visa until after we return from our honeymoon, as we are planning it a few days after the wedding. From your experience how long do you need to get the Visa application ready to send to Sheffield?
It depends how organised you are. You could do all the prep work before the wedding, making sure you have all the documents and that you will be able to submit the online application within 28 days of the latest statements, and then submit the online application and book the biometrics appointment (it's not a test, just someone taking your fingerprints and a photo of you) as soon as you come back from your honeymoon.
