SeanHolmes

Hi,

Myself (a UK citizen) and my wife (a Canadian citizen) have been married for almost 7 years (we married in Canada and have spent 5 years living in the UK. I am currently now back in Canada living with her as a visitor (Nova Scotia) and we plan too apply for PR (for myself) via the inland spousal sponsorship route. Of course one of the documents we will need to submit is a marriage certificate, however the certificate we have is just the one we were given at the ceremony which states on the back "not legal proof of marriage". To apply for an official certificate online through vital statistics can take 2-3 months, so my question to anybody who has been through this process themselves is will we get away with submitting a scan of the initial certificate we were given at the ceremony along with all of our other documents etc? I have now applied for the "official" certificate but we could really do with not waiting that long for it to come back before we submit out PR application (being that I am currently in the country as a visitor and unable to work.)

Any advice would be much appreciated,

Many thanks.

sharkus

Not an expert, but I'd say they won't accept the cert you have because as you stare it's not legal proof. They might just ask for you to supply the proper cert and then they will continue processing. worst case would be they just reject the application because of it and you'll need to start over.

christmasoompa

Afraid I'd wait. If you don't send the right thing then they'll either write back to you and ask you for it, or just return your application. Either will delay things further, them writing back to you for a missing document can add quite a chunk of time, and ditto returning an application can take months. You'll save time in the long run by making sure your application is complete and correct first time.

christmasoompa

Just a thought - you say you have been married 7 years and were in the UK for 5 of those years, where were you for the other two? Was it Canada and if so, what was your status there?

Antwerp_Belgian

As has been stated here, the certificate they give you when you get married does not count as legal proof.
What you could do to shorten the time to obtain your official marriage certificate is apply for it, get the express shipping option to ship it back asap and do the following right after:
Fax a very nicely worded letter to the Registrar General of your province´s office to explain your situation and that an expedited processing would help you greatly.
This may or may not speed up your processing time. It did for me.

SeanHolmes

Thanks for the reply, I was on a working holiday visa, I had 2 so unfortunately I can't get a third

SeanHolmes

Thank you for the advice, I will do this

SeanHolmes

Apologies but I'm a little confused who the registrar General of nova scotia would be, where should I look specifically? Would it be and individual, or Vital Statistics? Much appreciated

christmasoompa

Ah. Have you checked to see if you're eligible for PR via EE - there's a chance you'd be scoring enough and it would be much quicker than a spousal app?

Almost Canadian

Here you go: Apply for a Marriage Certificate - Government of Nova Scotia

In Alberta, any registry can order one. I don't know if this is the same in NS.

Antwerp_Belgian

Sorry about the confusion! That was the case for Ontario, where the Registrar General's office is in charge of this process. It does seem that in NS you need to apply to Vital Statistics.

SeanHolmes

I did just that, and you were correct, they have fast tracked the certificate. Many, many thanks for the advice