UK Spouse Visa

Hi everyone!!

I've been getting settled in England these past few weeks. I still can't get over how freaking beautiful this place is! I hope everyone here is doing well and I wish you all the best of luck for those who are still waiting for approvals to come through. I have my own personal blog, and I wrote up a post about our spouse visa story. It was super helpful for me to read different stories from people going through the same thing as we were. So my hope is that maybe our story can comfort someone else. I left the link below. Thank you again to everyone on here! You were much more support than you could ever know!

https://embracethejourney.co/2018/10/18/our-spouse-visa-story/

Hi everyone!!

I've been getting settled in England these past few weeks. I still can't get over how freaking beautiful this place is! I hope everyone here is doing well and I wish you all the best of luck for those who are still waiting for approvals to come through. I have my own personal blog, and I wrote up a post about our spouse visa story. It was super helpful for me to read different stories from people going through the same thing as we were. So my hope is that maybe our story can comfort someone else. I left the link below. Thank you again to everyone on here! You were much more support than you could ever know!

https://embracethejourney.co/2018/10/18/our-spouse-visa-story/

Glad you finally made it here and are getting settled . Thanks for the link to your blog - I'll check it out .

Great blog post... sorry you had so much trouble getting to the UK!

Just a couple of clarifications on what you wrote:

- you can actually marry as a visitor in the UK, BUT you need to apply for a Marriage Visitor Visa, instead of a regular visitor visa, and you cannot stay more than 6 months. So, like with the regular visitor visa, you have to show you have enough money to support your trip, that you are only visiting and will leave within 6 months, and that you have ties (a job and a home) to return to in the US after the wedding... plus you have to show you are making plans to marry in the UK within the allowed 6 months.

- after you applied for your spousal visa, the 12 weeks you were told in the email is based on business days, not calendar days. So, they did actually mean 12 weeks (12 x 5 working days), NOT 16 weeks.

Their processing standards target is:
- 95% of settlement applications processed in 12 weeks (60 working days)
- 100% of settlement applications processed in 24 weeks (120 working days)

Your persistence paid off! Thank you for sharing. 

Great blog post... sorry you had so much trouble getting to the UK!

Just a couple of clarifications on what you wrote:

- you can actually marry as a visitor in the UK, BUT you need to apply for a Marriage Visitor Visa, instead of a regular visitor visa, and you cannot stay more than 6 months. So, like with the regular visitor visa, you have to show you have enough money to support your trip, that you are only visiting and will leave within 6 months, and that you have ties (a job and a home) to return to in the US after the wedding... plus you have to show you are making plans to marry in the UK within the allowed 6 months.

- after you applied for your spousal visa, the 12 weeks you were told in the email is based on business days, not calendar days. So, they did actually mean 12 weeks (12 x 5 working days), NOT 16 weeks.

Their processing standards target is:
- 95% of settlement applications processed in 12 weeks (60 working days)
- 100% of settlement applications processed in 24 weeks (120 working days)

Thanks so much for clearing that up!! I still can't believe we had to wait so long. I think by the time we got the decision made email were at 102 business days!