Wait times for fiancee visa?

Hi everyone!

I am a Canadian citizen and my fiance is a British citizen. I currently have a WHMV that expires in April of 2009. I have just booked my return flight home on April 11th, 2009. We are getting married on June 19th, 2009 in the UK. (yes, stupid I know, we should have had the wedding before my visa expires but we have already paid the deposits, etc.and would lose out on a lot of money if we moved it!)

This gives me about 9 weeks for my fiance visa application to come through and I am just looking for a bit of reassurance. We will have been together for 3 years at the time of my application - we met in Canada and worked together while he had a working visa in Canada. We now have our own flat together in the UK. Here are the documents I am able to give that will support our relationship:
- Letters, pictures, Plane tickets, Holidays taken together (including: Vegas, most of Ontario and most of the UK and some of Europe), tickets from bus tours, amusement parks, attractions (such as niagara falls, london eye, etc.), concert gigs, hotel receipts, Joint bank account, Flat tenancy agreement, council tax, and bills with BOTH our names on it (including: BT, sky, water, gas, and electricity, TV license, home insurance), Mobile phone contracts, Gym memberships, Engagement and wedding band receipts, Payslips from both of our jobs, Contracts for all of our wedding suppliers with our date of marriage on all of them, engagement cards as well as photos from our engagement party as well as professionally done engagement photos, and E-mails and cards sent to one another via the post, including cards from flowers sent to me on our anniversary, valentines day, graduation, etc.

I feel like we have more than enough evidence, but am worried that it will take more than 9 weeks! Has anyone on the site gotten one in a short amount of time? Can you apply for this in person (ie. a quicker decision)?

I know it's a long way away still but I am stressing to the max already that it won't be in before the wedding! It only took one day for my WHMV to come through so I am hoping for the same!

Hello

My husband and I were in exactly the same situation in 2006. Although we had the added pressure of having only 8 wks (due to family illness) from start to finish to organise everything including the wedding!
In my experience you have everything you need, and you should have more than enough time to get your visa back. The visa took just 11 days from them receiving our application to us being granted clearance.

One thing you might not be aware of and unless the laws have changed in the last year in the UK you will need to give notice of your marriage. You both must be in the country to do this, so you will need to arrive back in the UK, around 25 days prior to your wedding day (can't remember the exact time scale but I'm looking at the dates from my old calender), in order to be resident there for 1 week and then give notice of your wedding. As I say this may well have now changed but when we married in '06 this was the law, and my husband made it to the UK with 2 days to spare before we wouldn't have legally been able to get married! We had no idea that we both needed to be in the UK to give notice of our marriage, and that he must be in the country for 1 week before being allowed to even give notice.

It sounds as though you have more than enough evidence, we sent lots of similar details, and it proved to be enough. In my experience the more evidence you can provide to support your application the better. As I say unless things have changed since 2006, you should have plenty of time for your visa application.

Good luck with everything.