Certificate of Approval - Processing Time

I am a British citizen with an Iranian girlfriend. We sent our application 8 weeks ago. It was after 6 weeks of waiting we contacted the UK Border Agency to request our passports back as we needed them for travel. 10 working days after the phone call the passports arrived as promised with the added bonus of our Certificate of Approval.

Certificate of Approval arrived today after 8 weeks.

I applied my COA on early april 2010, its been 5 weeks, but haven't heard any yet.
my visa runs out the end of june, I m running out of time to get merried.
the registry office advised that after giving notice we have to wait 16 days,
is it same in other cities as well?
days feels like months, Killing me!

I applied for my certificate of approval April 13th and still have not recieved a reply. My case is pretty straight forward. Does anyone know how long it takes??

reading all these makes me realise that its just not me facing a stressful situation..pwuff

i have posted my coa early april 2010 and have received a letter on 10th may 2010 that my case will now be passed to a caseworker...

will the processing time be 20-70days from 10th of may then...any idea??

also, is it quite difficult to get a wedding date from the registrar??

my visa end by the end of sept...is that an okish timescale ...or m running short of time...please advise??


thanks

-- Sun May 23, 2010 11:12 am --

reading all these makes me realise that its just not me facing a stressful situation..pwuff

i have posted my coa early april 2010 and have received a letter on 10th may 2010 that my case will now be passed to a caseworker...

will the processing time be 20-70days from 10th of may then...any idea??

also, is it quite difficult to get a wedding date from the registrar??

my visa end by the end of sept...is that an okish timescale ...or m running short of time...please advise??


thanks

As I said in a previous post it took 8 weeks to get the COA. In our county of Leicestershire it was minimum wait of 6 weeks before we could get an interview to get married. We can only get the interview in that county as it is where we live. We ended up booking the interview 1 week before our COA expired (Valid for 3 months from date of issue).

So my advice, book your venue ( at least 2 weeks after you have given notice to be marred, from the time you are interviewed) and book your interview date as late as possible and before you receive your COA.

Time scale:- Applied for UK COA end of February 2010. Marriage date mid August 2010.

Total time 22 weeks. (We could have done it in 18 weeks at the quickest or 11 weeks if we were sure that the COA would arrive after 8 weeks.)

Hi guys,
Today we received the long-awaited envelope with our COA and our passports )) Its been exactly 8 weeks!!!! As we hoped it would come...i find this webside very useful,,,,i ve been checking it every day and it helped us to be prepared...we booked the appointment at our registrar office one week ago so we dont have to wait that long to give a notice(actually our appointment is in two weeks-thats 3weeks together)
Hope our experience helped.....good luck to everyone...

Congratulations Leerone! I sent our application for COA last April 14.. I am on my sixth week now of waiting for it.. they did mail me a week after april 14 that they got my application and they would inform us in case we need to do further actions.. I am hoping there is no further actions as we have not heard from them until now..

I hope I would get it on the 8th week too. Although would probably have my COA in my hand before booking an appointment with the registrar office

Goodluck on your wedding arrangements

Hi guys,
Today we received the long-awaited envelope with our COA and our passports )) Its been exactly 8 weeks!!!! As we hoped it would come...i find this webside very useful,,,,i ve been checking it every day and it helped us to be prepared...we booked the appointment at our registrar office one week ago so we dont have to wait that long to give a notice(actually our appointment is in two weeks-thats 3weeks together)
Hope our experience helped.....good luck to everyone...

Hi, my boyfriend is a British citizen and I am American, I just sent in the application for our COA yesterday only problem(hopefully!) is I originally planned to be the UK for only 2 weeks as a visitorbut my passport wasn't stamped and I could never get ANYONE to tell me what to do about it. Any similar situations? Worried about getting interrogated...

All these messages.

Hi, my boyfriend is a British citizen and I am American, I just sent in the application for our COA yesterday only problem(hopefully!) is I originally planned to be the UK for only 2 weeks as a visitorbut my passport wasn't stamped and I could never get ANYONE to tell me what to do about it. Any similar situations? Worried about getting interrogated...

just wanted to let anyone thinking about applying that we immediately recieved a letter back stating our app has been handed to caseworker, so maybe right now is a good time to get it in!