90 Day Fiance

Congratulations on starting the K1 process! My husband and I also did a K1, and I have a few tips and suggestions for you:

1) The timeline goes much faster than you think. We opted to plan a ceremony along with getting married. This meant a six month time crunch after his approval. It may not seem like a short period but in the wedding industry, it definitely is. You will not have time for gown fittings, save the dates, or your future spouse there for any planning or events leading up to the wedding. If we could do it again, we would've just done a small civil ceremony at the city hall and done a formal ceremony later on, in order to give us time (and more money, because K1/AOS is not cheap).

2) People, no matter how hard you try to spell it out, will not understand. His family were in two different countries than the US and much like your family, are elderly and not rich, so making the trip would've required a lot of planning. As such, we settled for a livestream. Most of our invitations fell on deaf ears. We wanted to normalize our wedding as much as possible but also make it clear we were livestreaming as a matter of fairness to our "global family" and provided all time zones, a request for attendance "whether near or far" and a link to our website/livestream. People, many people, told us they couldn't make it or they just ghosted us. On one hand, we learned which of our family/friends were supportive and which weren't. But most are hard-pressed to do anything different. So they won't do anything at all.

3) Don't try too hard to placate others. Initially we didn't want anyone at our wedding because we thought it wasn't fair to the parents who couldn't make it. In the end, we negotiated having our mothers and my maid of honor there. Ultimately, do not fall to pressure to make others happy because with the odd circumstances, you may find yourself bending over backwards to include others, who frankly don't deserve it. And that will breed resentment and upset. You have enough stress on your plate on the immigration visa journey. Cut yourself some slack and lower expectations, sooner rather than later.

If you want to know more about our experience, I welcome you to DM me any time.

Thank you so much for your input! I have thought about doing just a court house first and then a celebration later, but we both, like you, want to try and make it as normal as possible. The hardest part is not knowing when we will be approved for the Visa. From my understanding you have 6 months once it is approved to action the visa, is that correct?