Expat Community > England

jennymarie
Joined 2008
Posts: 1

Need Help with UK Settlement Visa!!

16 years ago

Hello,

I'm a US citizen who recently got engaged to a UK citizen. I'm in school (will graduate in May) and so we're on a tight schedule with our wedding. We plan to get married in May. He's coming back to the US for the wedding. We've set a date for May 16th. Then we need to apply for our settlement visa. He has to go back to work, so must fly out on June 4. Ideally, I would like to fly back on that date as well, plus or minus a few days anyways.

We're trying to figure out how long it would take to get the settlement visa. We'd be applying to the Chicago office. We know what kinds of documents to organize and we plan on spending a vast amount of time once he gets here organizing everything into a binder.

The Chicago office page says to give it at least 2 weeks. All we really have is 2 weeks. I've heard stories of people getting approved in less than a week, sometimes in a couple of days. Is this common?

Should my fiance and I risk it taking only 2 weeks? Should I go ahead and buy my plane ticket for June 4 before they get too expensive (college students have such tight budgets...especially since I want to have a good chunk in the bank account when I file the visa application)?

Any thoughts on the amount of time it takes to get the settlement visa? I don't think there's anything about our application that would raise any red flags. I think we'll have a very legit and straightforward application. Thoughts?

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