Marriage on Standard UK visitor visa

[londonlondon2022]

Hi,
I came to UK on standard visitor visa in May. After a month, my partner, who is a UK citizen, received his divorce from his previous marriage and we decided to get married. We then went to council and gave notice of marriage providing them our passport copies and my standard visitor visa copy. They accepted it and registered us for marriage ceremony after 3 months.

We both have now received a generic letter from home office that our notice is only 28 days but also mentions that we must also obtain the appropriate marriage visa before the ceremony goes ahead.

Can anyone reckon if this is mandatory? or give pointers or suggest what should we do. Going back to my home country is planned for November. but it would be good if we can get married in October itself in the UK as planned.

Many thanks in advance.

[AmazonianX]

Hi,
I came to UK on standard visitor visa in May. After a month, my partner, who is a UK citizen, received his divorce from his previous marriage and we decided to get married. We then went to council and gave notice of marriage providing them our passport copies and my standard visitor visa copy. They accepted it and registered us for marriage ceremony after 3 months.

We both have now received a generic letter from home office that our notice is only 28 days but also mentions that we must also obtain the appropriate marriage visa before the ceremony goes ahead. Marriage ceremony can not be made while on visitor visa hence the request for you to get the appropriate visa before going on with plan.

Can anyone reckon if this is mandatory? or give pointers or suggest what should we do. Going back to my home country is planned for November. but it would be good if we can get married in October itself in the UK as planned.

Many thanks in advance.

[TODMATT]

Hi,
I came to UK on standard visitor visa in May. After a month, my partner, who is a UK citizen, received his divorce from his previous marriage and we decided to get married. We then went to council and gave notice of marriage providing them our passport copies and my standard visitor visa copy. They accepted it and registered us for marriage ceremony after 3 months.

We both have now received a generic letter from home office that our notice is only 28 days but also mentions that we must also obtain the appropriate marriage visa before the ceremony goes ahead.

Can anyone reckon if this is mandatory? or give pointers or suggest what should we do. Going back to my home country is planned for November. but it would be good if we can get married in October itself in the UK as planned.

Many thanks in advance.

Can you share the generic letter you have received?

[THO]

I was under the distinct impression that it is not possible to change a visitor visa to another visa while in the UK, so why has the HO seemingly allowed you to do so?

[AmazonianX]

HO has informed them to get the appropriate visa before the ceremony. This will entail getting fiancee or marriage visa and as per your impression, the visas are to be applied from outside the UK (at least to my knowledge) except there is a policy change not readily available to the public.

[THO]

Precisely Amazonia, but surely the HO would have said get a fiance visa (or MVV), which you must apply for outside of the UK, and not just get the correct visa, which leaves the couple concerned, confused about the process. If they apply inside the UK, it will cost £1550 (or whatever the cost is now) on a 100% chance it will be a failed attempt.

[AmazonianX]

Precisely Amazonia, but surely the HO would have said get a fiance visa (or MVV), which you must apply for outside of the UK, and not just get the correct visa, which leaves the couple concerned, confused about the process. If they apply inside the UK, it will cost £1550 (or whatever the cost is now) on a 100% chance it will be a failed attempt.

You should not be surprised at the convoluted way HO goes about process and immigration procedure information dissemination. It is such that warrants the existence of fora like this.

[londonlondon2022]

The letter is as follows:

Your proposed marriage was referred by a registration official to the Secretary of State to decide whether to investigate if the proposed marriage is a sham. This letter is to notify that the Secretary of State has decided not to conduct such investigation.
Your marriage remains subject to 28 days notice period and for the marriage to take place after 28 days, the registration official must be satisfied that there is no legal reason why they can not issue the reqd certificate.
you must also obtain the appropriate marriage or civil partnership visa before the ceremony goes ahead.

---
The letter also says that they will judge the genuineness of relationship only when there is further visa application to remain in the UK.
We are happy to apply for Spouse visa outside the UK, but our only concern is whether can we get married now on the standard visitor visa or not. If not, would it make sense to go back to my home country to get the marriage visa? OR, Rather we would then go together and get married there itself since my partner is UK citizen and does not need visa to visit my home country.

[THO]

So, you would need to go back to your home country and apply from there. You would need to meet all the criteria such as minimum salary and find a way to prove the relationship is genuine, which if you have only met for a few weeks would seem rather hard to me.

It is also not very smart to marry a person after such short time together, you hardly know them and have no idea whether you will remain interested in each other for more than a few weeks.

[londonlondon2022]

Do you mean apply the marriage visitor visa or get married in the home country?

[THO]

The non UK citizen needs to return and then apply for the fiance visa from there. Once you have this, he/ she can return to marry. They normally take 12 weeks or more to get, but yours might take a lot longer, since it will probably look (to the HO) like a sham.

[Ticktack]

The letter is as follows:

Your proposed marriage was referred by a registration official to the Secretary of State to decide whether to investigate if the proposed marriage is a sham. This letter is to notify that the Secretary of State has decided not to conduct such investigation.
Your marriage remains subject to 28 days notice period and for the marriage to take place after 28 days, the registration official must be satisfied that there is no legal reason why they can not issue the reqd certificate.
you must also obtain the appropriate marriage or civil partnership visa before the ceremony goes ahead.

---
The letter also says that they will judge the genuineness of relationship only when there is further visa application to remain in the UK.
We are happy to apply for Spouse visa outside the UK, but our only concern is whether can we get married now on the standard visitor visa or not. If not, would it make sense to go back to my home country to get the marriage visa? OR, Rather we would then go together and get married there itself since my partner is UK citizen and does not need visa to visit my home country.

As it currently stands, you can't get married here in the UK on a visitor's visa. Your visa allows you to visit the UK. What you're intending to do wasn't what you said when you applied for your visa.
You can't get a visa to the UK based on certain conditions, then decide to reconfigure your permissions by yourself at a later date.
You would need to go back and apply for a visa that suits your new and future intentions.

If you decide that you want to marry right now, then you best option would be for you and your spouse to get married outside the UK.

If you then intend to live together as partners, your spouse can either move to your country, or you apply for the appropriate spouse visa to move here. You would need to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this isn't a marriage of convenience. A relationship with longevity always has more documents of proof than a short relationship.

The burden of proof remains with the pair of you.

[Br28016-1]

Worth speaking with registrar where you want to get married as I understand they make decision on whether to let you marry.

Worth being aware that settlement and marriage in this situation are different. Whilst I believe you can get married you would normally be expected to be on either a fiance visa if staying and going for settlement visa or a marriage visitor visa where you would leave UK afterwards. If on standard visitor visa the period of notice can be extended due to referral to home office so sounds reasonable positive.

Rules definitely used to be that if get married on visitor marriage visa then had to return to home country to apply for settlement visa so would expect application for settlement to fail if done inside UK.

We got married in UK on visitor marriage visa which is standard visitor visa but with specific permission to marry but had to leave UK and apply for settlement visa from home country. Worked for us due to circumstances.

[TODMATT]

The letter is as follows:

Your proposed marriage was referred by a registration official to the Secretary of State to decide whether to investigate if the proposed marriage is a sham. This letter is to notify that the Secretary of State has decided not to conduct such investigation.
Your marriage remains subject to 28 days notice period and for the marriage to take place after 28 days, the registration official must be satisfied that there is no legal reason why they can not issue the reqd certificate.
you must also obtain the appropriate marriage or civil partnership visa before the ceremony goes ahead.

---
The letter also says that they will judge the genuineness of relationship only when there is further visa application to remain in the UK.
We are happy to apply for Spouse visa outside the UK, but our only concern is whether can we get married now on the standard visitor visa or not. If not, would it make sense to go back to my home country to get the marriage visa? OR, Rather we would then go together and get married there itself since my partner is UK citizen and does not need visa to visit my home country.

I have come across many people who got married on a visiting visa even though it is not the visa type to get married.

If they did not object to your marriage with the registrar then I see no reason why you cannot get married.