I am not sure if I am being a bit over ambitious by calling this a “definitive guide”, but I thought that I should write about my experiences in our successful application for a UK fiancé visa. By fiancé visa I mean that you have to intend to marry IN THE UK within the permitted time (6 months from date of issue of the visa). You cannot get married in another country before you arrive and doing so causes a whole heap of problems.
Firstly, I should explain that I am the sponsor, but I was heavily involved in all of the completion of this application. In fact the only thing that I didn’t have a part in was the cover letter written by my fiancé. All of the information in this post is personal experience and knowledge gained from various forums and also from speaking to the UKBA directly. I couldn’t possibly provide you with the phone number for the office that takes care of these applications, because I shouldn’t have it and I wouldn’t want it to be abused. But I can assure you that I spoke to them on a number of occasions asking various questions that I couldn’t find answers to that were specific to my circumstances. I found that even the UKBA officers can be a little confused about things and some of them are better than others.
Although we managed to get the whole thing done in 20 days (from day of starting application to receiving the visa using Worldbridge) I would strongly recommend that you DO NOT LEAVE THIS UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE because it will save you a lot of stress and sleepless nights. Obviously, the UKBA don’t leave applicants much of a window by only allowing you to submit it within three months of the intended date of arrival in the UK. But you should take this into account and plan around that requirement.
One of my first questions at the start of this process was “What do I need to include in the application?” because the UKBA website is useless at explaining this. So here is what was in our application pack….
What you need to send:
• Applicant Passport (original and photo copy of biometric page)
• Application form (online)
• Cover letters from applicant and sponsor (each written separately)
• Sponsors declaration form
• Appendix 2
• Copy of sponsors passport
• Decree absolute if applicable (original and photo copy)
• Evidence of a lasting relationship
o Photos
o Air fares
o Emails
o Skype / Facetime history
o Phone bills
• Evidence of wanting to get married
o Reservations
o Emails of enquiry
o Booking for wedding licence
o Photos / Receipts for rings
• Sponsors financial evidence
o 6 months payslips (or a letter from employer)
o 6 months bank statements (include notes of explanation for large sums)
• Sponsors evidence to provide accommodation
o Land registry print out
o Council tax bill
o Tenancy agreement if renting
• Prepaid return envelope for return of original documents
• Worldbridge receipt if applicable (put it on the very top)
Ok, so now you have the list. Please, if anyone spots any mistakes or anything glaringly obvious that I have left out, let me know and I will amend it.
Now let us look at some of those things in a little bit more detail…..
Applicant Passport: This need to be an original and in date document along with a couple of photo copies of the biometrics page and any existing visas etc. You don’t need to copy the whole thing cover to cover and it doesn’t need to be notarised. We did ours on a 3-in-1 inkjet printer/scanner. If you have more than one passport, send those too. The UKBA want to know where you have been and if you have declared travel that doesn’t show up on the passport that you sent to them, they will want to know about it and it could delay your application.
Application form: This was done online, paid for and then printed out to be sent to UKBA in Sheffield. Yes, Sheffield…. not New York.
Cover letters: These need to be written individually and independently. It doesn’t matter if they contain almost exactly the same information. That is expected and inevitable because after all you are both telling the same story. DO NOT look up examples online or you will fall into the trap of following its format which will be identified by the immigration officer and will make alarm bells go off. Make sure it is personal, not official/robotic and make sure you are honest with yourself (and talking more to the gentlemen here) make sure you talk about love and what you both hope for the future. Sponsors should also reiterate that they support the application and that they intend to support the applicant financially. A note for sponsors, I signed my letter, scanned it as a PDF and sent it for the applicant to print out and there were no issues with that.
The Sponsors declaration form and Appendix 2 are both self explanatory. You will be provided with links to them both upon completion of the online application. If you miss the links, they can both be found on the UKBA website. The sponsors declaration needs to be the original signed document.
Copy of sponsors passport: Cover to cover. That means every page, even if they are blank. I did mine in colour at a copy shop while I was in California. It wasn’t notarised and I only sent one copy. Obviously, this could make things infinitely easier because it could be scanned as a PDF and sent to the applicant instead of paying postage to send reams of documents to your fiancé. In fact, pretty much everything can be sent by email apart from the signed sponsors declaration and decree absolute if applicable.
Decree absolute: This, apart from the applicant passport, is the only original document that we sent. With photocopies of course.
Evidence of a lasting relationship: You have to have met and be able to provide evidence of this with photos together, with friends, with family. Also, you should evidence in the way of e-tickets for flights to see each other. Any correspondence between each other is useful, such as hand written letters, or card, or receipts for gifts (we included email invoices for flowers that I sent and Amazon orders). For emails, we sent “print screens” of an inbox search for the other persons name. This saves printing out all of the emails but it shows that you have been emailing each other. Print screens for Skype or Facetime call history is good. Think about Facebook because it is open source information that the UKBA can check and nearly everyone uses it, so if you are shown as engaged to each other on there, provide that too.
Evidence of wanting to get married: I would like to dispel a myth that I found on a lot of forums… IT IS POSSIBLE TO BOOK A WEDDING LICENCE APPOINTMENT. It can be a real pain to do, but I managed it. You will have to contact a designated registry office for this, and some of them won’t let you. For instance, Leicester won’t, but Dartford will. Some counties require you to have a wedding venue booked already, but some venues won’t let you book a wedding until the wedding licence appointment is booked. The easiest thing to do is find a designated office that will let you make the booking for the licence and get married there too. They will provide you with an email with confirmation which is worth its weight in gold in your application. If you struggle with getting your wedding licence appointment, you can request a letter from the superintendent registrar which will prove that you have enquired but that they aren’t able to provide you with the appointment until the applicant arrives in the UK. Beyond this, include photos or receipts for rings, invoices for wedding receptions, wedding cakes, dresses, tuxedos, etc.
Sponsors financial evidence: 6 months of payslips and 6 months of bank statements. Mine were all available online in PDF format so I just emailed them to the applicant. I also included a P60, but it wasn’t required. Again, nothing was notarised, just printed on an inkjet printer. I was told by the UKBA that if I didn’t have 6 months of payslips that I could include a letter from my employer stating my terms of employment and my salary. I didn’t ask anything about that because it wasn’t applicable to me. Make sure you attach explanatory notes to the front of your bank statement to explain any unusual transactions or movements of large quantities of money. Do not worry if you go into your overdraft each month. I was doing this by up to £400 on some occasions, but as long as it is cleared each month when you get paid I think it will be ok.
Sponsors accommodation: I think this is simple enough. A land registry printout if you own your home, which is available on the land registry website and doesn’t cost much. Other forms of evidence would be a mortgage statement, council tax bill, or tenancy agreement if you are renting. There seems to be some debate over addresses being over crowded or not fit for purpose. If this is the case for you, I would suggest you have other issues and should look at other peoples’ posts about obtaining official reports about your accommodation.
Prepaid return envelope: Some people have run into problems doing this, being unable to find a service that provides this service. What I did was create an account on FedEx UK and paid for postage from UKBA Sheffield back to the applicant. I then saved the postage slip as a PDF and sent it to the applicant to print out and put on an envelope. FedEx don’t charge you until the postage slip is scanned on collection, which is great, because from what I have read of other peoples experience (now including my own) the UKBA just send it back using their own FedEx account. So I didn’t get charged!
Worldbridge: I used them and it meant the turn around on it was just 20 days. I have no idea if using worldbridge means that the application is put under any less scrutiny and I cannot tell you how long your application will take to process. All I can offer is my experience, what I did and that it led to a successful application.
Well that’s it….. I hope it will prove useful so at least one person can benefit from it.
Comments and suggestions are always welcome. If anyone has questions I will try my best to answer but pretty much all that I know about fiancé visa applications is written above.
Toodle pip.
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