Can you believe it's been a month and a day since I married Americo?
I can't. It feels like we've been married for far longer, which makes sense since we've felt married since we first started to talk to each other in 2007.
We've done so much in the last month, I honestly don't know how we did it all. We've gotten together all the necessary documents for the second stage of our immigration process, and today we paid out another bucket of change to submit and pay for part two.
In case you don't know, there are two ways to get your partner to Australia:
1. You apply straight up for a de facto/spouse partner visa. You need to pay a higher fee and you have to provide a lot more evidence, like joint bank accounts and evidence you'd lived together.
2. You apply for a prospective marriage visa, get married, and then apply for a second stage visa which covers the two part temporary/permanent residency visa.
For us, we felt that the prospective marriage visa process was the easier option for us. We were applying ourselves, rather than through an agent, so we weren't 100% confident on the paperwork and the process. We hadn't lived together, didn't have joint bank accounts, and despite the wealth of evidence we had of our relationship we didn't feel confident jumping in the deep end.
After our prospective marriage visa got approved, we had to jump right back into getting the paperwork together for the temporary residency visa. That's part of the reason we put the wedding on fast forward, we just wanted to speed up part two and get right to the woot we're married forever part.
And now we're done with that application. We're just back to to waiting for the lovely immigration people to make a judgement about whether we're legit.
I can only hope that this time around we get lucky with another kind case officer that can see our love in all our evidence.
I can't imagine having to go back to living without him.
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