Caro

I have started this new thread instead of hijacking another thread.

Getting married in France is not that complicated. There is just a procedure to follow that is more cumbersome than in the US. Your French fiancee is living in France, so she can file the papers in the city hall of where you want to get married in advance (2 months). I do not believe that you have to be there for filing the paperwork (but there would be stuff required from you that I would assume you can mail in to her). You do not have to meet the residency requirement, since only one spouse has to meet it and she would obviously have met it already.

I have seldomly read about a K1 being denied myself.

As far as Marian is concerned, she did not DCF in Paris. Her fiance got a K1 visa. They filed for AOS after getting married and are close to having their final interview.

Personally, I would look at things like (in random order):
- "Where do we want to get married?"
- "Is it important to her that we get married in France?"
- "Do we want a religious wedding or a civil one?" [if this is the case, you can get married in the courthouse in the US and have the religious ceremony in France. This is what several French/US couples have done.]
- "If we want to have two ceremonies, is it OK if they are apart by 6 months to 1 year?"
- "If we decide to get married in France, is it going to be OK if you have to leave shortyl after and she has to wait in France? Or is it better that you go the K1 route and that you have the wait before you get married?"
- "What about your family/her family?"

So, I think that to figure out which route you want to take, you should look at what is important to you. There is the immigration side, but there is also the fact that this is your wedding, and in my opinion, you should make sure that the two of you are happy with the way you decide to mix marriage and immigration.

We got married in the US [it made sense to us since I was a student in the US at the time] and my close family insisted on flying from France for the ceremony at the courthouse [It was like a month and a half after 9/11, but they wanted to come and they all got their tickets a week or so after 9/11.]. We also had a religious ceremony in France 6 months later. It was important for me to have part of the wedding in France.

Caroline

scorpie

Hi Caroline,
thank you for this special thread. I finally got answers from Marian !! I am so happy and relieved. She answered all questions I needed to know. She also said that since a couple months ago, US embassy in paris DOES DCF for non-residents! yay !!

We plan to get married in paris for now but it's too much paper work to furnish, so we may change our plan to do it here. It's not important for either one of us as long the process is not difficult.

Merci beaucoup de ton aide !!
scorpie