Wedding Wednesday: Our Visa Story

Dear readers, I'm so excited for my trip to England on Saturday!  It's seemed so far away for so long that I can't really quite believe that it's almost here.  While I'm gone next week, I've asked a few lovely expats - two Americans in England and a Scot in the States - to guest post about how they tackled the nuts and bolts of marrying husbands from across the pond.  I can't tell you how many emails I get from girls telling me that they want to live happily ever after with a boy who has an accent, so I'm delighted to share these stories with you and I sincerely hope they help.  We don't want to scare you off, but you need to be prepared if you're hoping to tie the knot with a British boy (or American, if you're British) because there's quite a bit involved!  I thought that actually we might kick off next week's series with my own story, since I've dropped a few hints on Twitter and here on this blog about running into some bureaucratic problems, so here goes.

London engagement session by Tarah Coonan; September 2012

As I reiterate every time I write about my visa experiences, let me remind you that I am not an immigration lawyer or authority in any sense other than the personal.  Please do speak with an expert if you're considering embarking on this process and you have visa questions.  But this is what I found: if you're not already a legal resident of the UK, you need two things to get married there, a visa and a license.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well, in theory...

Let's start with the visa because you can't get the license without the visa.  In order to get married in the UK without intending to remain in the country after your wedding, you need to apply for a visa as a Visitor for Marriage or Civil Partnership.  You may apply for this visa up to a year in advance of your wedding date and, assuming you're not entering into a sham or forced marriage and you fill out all the paperwork and send in all the required documentation exactly as you're supposed to, there's no reason you wouldn't be granted the visa.

Once you have the visa, you can get your license; this is when you give notice at the register office in the UK.  In order to give notice, you have to have been resident of the county in which you are getting your license for eight consecutive days, and you cannot get your license less than fifteen days before your wedding date.  Got that?  Okay, good.  Now here's where it gets a bit dicey...

There are two types of visas that can be granted: multiple-entry and single-entry. They are exactly as they sound.  On a multiple-entry visa, you can leave and reenter the country as many times as you want while the visa is valid.  (Both my student visa and my work visa were multiple-entry visas, which is how I was able to travel extensively while living in London.)  A single-entry visa, however, means that you basically use up the freedoms and/or rights that the visa gives you the first time you enter the country, and, once you leave, the visa becomes invalid.

So if the visa I'm granted - the visa that will allow me to travel to the UK, get our license, and get married - is a muti-entry visa, Jon and I can give notice when I'm over on one trip and then have our wedding on a separate trip.  If I'm granted a single-entry visa, we have to do both at the same time.  Go back up two paragraphs and do the math, will you?  That's right, I'd have to arrive in England in late July in order to fulfill the requirements for our license before getting married on August 24, and I wouldn't be able to leave the country at all during those four weeks.  Now, my employers are very understanding of my destination wedding and the time and energy it's taking, but they'd do more than hesitate before giving me permission to leave for a solid month!  It's simply not an option.

That means we're crossing our fingers that I'm issued a multi-entry visa.  Actually, we're doing more than that - we spent good money on a wonderful immigration lawyer, who advised us the best way to ensure (in as much as we can) that my visa will be multi-entry.  At the end of the day, it's up to the discretion of the immigration officer who processes my application, so we just have to make the best case possible.

Our plan, assuming all goes well, is that I'll apply for my visa from DC as soon as I've returned from England at the end of April and, after being issued my multi-entry visa, I'll head back to London in late June for a 12 day trip during which we'll get our license.  Then I'll come back to the US, and finally will fly over again in mid-August for our wedding, returning to DC two days after the wedding (without Jon, for the time being).

Cross your fingers for us, dear readers, and send us all the dotted "i"s and crossed "t"s you have lying around!  We need to do this the right way, or else - well, I don't know what else.  Let's just think happy thoughts about this!  And, if these sorts of things interest you, come back next week to see how a few other girls wed their transatlantic loves.  You'll see that these boys really have to be worth the effort we make for them... at least, that's what I remind Jon whenever he gives me a hard time about something!