One Year Anniversary!

One year ago today, Jon and I got married!

Here's a collage of pictures of us from our adventures during our first year! You can click to see it larger.

Dan.

Interview FINALLY scheduled!!

Hello everyone ,

I apologise for the long gap in between posts again, but until this past week we still hadn't made any further progress on our situation.

However, I say "until this past week" because there has finally been movement! Jon and I were away the weekend so I was unable to post about this, but I'm happy to report that after months of waiting and knowing nothing, we got an email on Thursday night from the NVC confirming an interview date with the US embassy in London!
To say it was an immense relief would be an understatement. We have waited a year now for this to happen, and it's felt like the day would never come!

Of course, before I can have the interview I have to attend a medical in London, which I booked yesterday for next week. This I'm not looking forward to. Prodded, poked, examined, tested and more - and for that I have to pay £235! Thankfully once it's done, it's done for good and I'll never have stuffer it again, but that doesn't necessarily make it any better.

The email we received from the NVC detailed what we needed to do next, including which documents I would be required to bring to the interview. There was also instructions to go to immigrantvisas.state.gov and complete the online registration. This is required so that you can confirm your appointment, and further select your document delivery details for once you have been approved by the consulate.

So, I'm registered on the website. I have my login and I confirmed my appointment. I actually still have to select which option I want for delivery of my passport and visa following the interview. I am going to chose home delivery, which apparently costs another £18. The reason for selecting home delivery though is easy. All the collection places on their list are a long way away and it'd cost me at least the £18 to get there, plus my own time and hassle, so I figure I might as well pay it and get them to deliver to me.

Well, here we are. In less than 6 weeks I'll have had my interview and should be waiting for my passport to b returned to I can travel to the US!

I'll update here again once I know more about the interview as we are talking to our lawyer in the next few weeks about what to expect. It's nerve racking to say the least, but it's finally here!

Dan.

July Updates

Hello everyone,

I apologise for the lack of updates recently (again!). Life seems to be very busy and times moves too fast, and before I know it, it's the end of July and I haven't made any posts recently! Not that there is a lot to post about, sadly.

I had good intentions of posting a 4th entry, since this was the first year I was married to my American husband, which sort of in my mind made the holiday more "real" to me. As always though, it slipped my mind!

In my update from the 24th June I said that all our forms had been submitted and that we were now waiting to hear further details about my medical and interview. Since then we received some rather nondescript letters that, according to our lawyers, are standard mail-outs from the the government.
The first was a letter to say that they had "updated" my application. That's pretty much all it said, but at least they received all our documents and there were no issues. The next letter was one that I received, which was basically a printout of my details and our case number, which again, is just some standard thing they seem to do. It doesn't necessarily get us any further along, but it's some small consolation at least that someone, somewhere in the government, has looked at our file in order to generate these automatic letters.

We spoke to our lawyer yesterday, as we are growing increasingly frustrated with this epically long process, and as far as anyone knows, we should hear from the government regarding my interview "soon"... How soon that is is anybody's guess, but let's hope it's at least in the next month or two.

Once I have more, I'll be sure to update you all.

Dan.

The First Anniversary

Hello everyone,

A year ago today, almost to the very moment that I write this, the United States Supreme Court finally announced its much anticipated ruling on the Edith Windsor case against the United States government.
We all know now of course that section 3 of DOMA was thrown out in a scathing attack by Justice Kennedy, thus enabling thousands of Americans and their partners to finally be allowed access to vital federal benefits.

Since that day Jon and I have gone through a torturous journey to get through the immigration process so that we can finally be together, and while it's been long and stressful, it's now possible thanks to a determined lady and her fight for equality.

We are nearing the end of the immigration process now, with only my medical and visa interview to come, and to think, a year and a day ago, it simply wasn't legal.

Mrs Windsor, we are eternally grateful - thank you.

Dan.

Update on our progress

Hello everyone,

Two weeks ago I sent off for my police certificate using the premium service (£80). Documents I needed for the police certificate were a copy of my passport, two letter addressed to me and a recent passport photo endorsed by a friend I've known for more than 2 years. The certificate came back within the week and I then sent it to our lawyers in Los Angeles.
Once the lawyers received it they then forwarded it to the National Visa Center (NVC). However, I didn't know until after the fact that I'd also need a copy to take to my medical interview eventually, so the lawyers scanned a copy and sent it to me, which I printed out.

Around the same time Jon had to fill out all the forms for the I-864 Affidavit of Support and send those along with the supporting documents to the lawyers also. Documents he needed for this included evidence of income and federal tax returns statements and IRS transcripts.

Now that everything has been submitted to the NVC, our lawyers tell us that it's literally a case of waiting for the embassy in London to contact me now with interview details!

After all we've been though in this long process, I cannot believe we are finally at the stage where I am just waiting for my medical and interview!

Once we hear any more I'll of course update here.

Dan.

DS-260 submitted! Welcome to June!

Hello everyone,

Well it's now June and I can't believe how the time has flown by! I started this blog late last June when DOMA got thrown out, so it's been nearly a year now!

In that year you've seen me planning for our wedding, getting married, submit our initial petition, wait forever to get approved, followed by finally get approved and now here we are at what is nearly the end of this part of my journey!

The week before last, our lawyers filled out the DS-260 for us based on the information we had provided to them previously. We went through it and amended as necessary, and last night our lawyers informed us that it had been submitted to the government on our behalf!
Of course, last time I wrote here, we were waiting for a case number in order to submit the DS-260. What is strange is that our lawyers didn't actually inform us when we had gotten our case number, and the first we heard about it was when they emailed last night to simply say the forms had been sent. The department of state website says that the DS-260 can only be submitted with a case number, so we assume that's what's happened. I don't know why the lawyers failed to be forthcoming on this part, but so long as the job gets done then I guess it's all good!
So right now, based on a fairly good educated guess, we think we have a case number, which means that we are well on the way to the final stage of this infuriatingly long process.
At some point the lawyers will need to send in Jon's affidavit of support to the government, and once that is done then my application will sent to the US consulate in London where they will contact me with a date for my medical and my final interview. Phew!

There is one thing I need to do here in the meantime. You may recall a while ago I was worrying about police certificates for when I have my interview. Well, seeing as we are now in the final stages, today I printed out from the UK police website the form I need to send, wrote the cheque and prepared to send it. I need to get my passport photocopied though and enclose that, as well as a passport sized photo signed by someone I know.
I'll be sending it all early next week hopefully, and it should take about 2 weeks to come back to me.
One final thing. You may notice I've changed the address of this blog. It seemed to fit better in my mind, so if you have it saved anywhere remember to update your bookmarks.

Ok, I think that's everything. As always when there are further developments I'll post them here!

Dan.

Updates - May 2014

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry that I didn't post anything in April, but Jon and I were both very busy travelling and working.

Last time I was here, I spoke about our recent approval for our visa application. Well, the week after I posted that we received the hard copy in the mail, which we were of course very happy about.
We are now about half way through the next stage, waiting for our case number to come through and the go ahead to send in the next round of forms. From what our lawyers say, we are hoping that this will be by the end of May/start of June - not long to go!

At the start of April I had to go to the emergency eye clinic (near where I live here in the UK) because I was having an issue with my right eye. It's hard to explain what was happening, but it basically caused me enough concern that I went to my optician, they looked at my eyes, and immediately referred me to the eye doctor. I took my referral letter the following day (a Sunday no less) and was checked over by the eye doctor at the clinic. Although there is an underlying issue, it isn't anything to worry about right now, apparently. I have a condition developing that normally starts a bit later in life, that generally effects everyone. It's more to do with the ageing process and develops naturally as we get older. It's just for some reason, it has started earlier in me. You can imagine all the things that were going through my mind while sitting in the clinic, so I was relieved to hear that it wasn't cause for concern.

Jon then came over and we spent nearly 3 weeks together, 10 days of which were spent on a driving tour of some sights in Europe we had yet to visit together, and some old favourites along the way!
We started off by visiting some dear friends of ours in the Netherlands, in their home town of Hulst. From there we visited Amsterdam with them, and a place just over the border in Belgium, called Sint Niklaas. After 3 wonderful days in the Netherlands we headed down to Belgium, to the city of Antwerp. We were visiting good friends who live just east of the city, and again spent 3 days there. We explored Antwerp (although we had been before), and also drove over the border to Germany for a day to a place called Aachen.

From Belgium we drove to Disneyland Paris where we spent 5 wonderful days enjoying their Swing into Spring festivities.

Finally, last weekend we went to see the hit musical Wicked, in London for Jon's (belated) birthday present.

In less than 3 weeks time we are off to Tokyo for a week where we will of course be visiting Tokyo Disney Resort.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Dan.