Overview
It took me more or less a month to collate all the needed documents. And tons of stress and worry. Good thing that my boyfriend at that time (husband now) has kept on encouraging and supporting me all throughout the process. I can’t thank you enough, V, and I know you will be reading this.
The Start of My UK Visa Journey
When my husband proposed to me last year while we were traveling together in Singapore, I was over the moon! We then talked of getting married and settling down. It was difficult for us to decide where to get married. If we do that in the Philippines, some of his family members might not be able to come and the same thing applies to me. We also thought that a lot of paperwork will be needed if we do it in the Philippines.
After discussing it thoroughly, we decided to do it in the UK and we’ll do a separate celebration when we go visit the Philippines at a later time. That’s how my UK visa journey began.
Where and How Did I Start?
Just a tip: If you solely rely on the UK website, you won’t fully understand everything. It’s just vague. In the forum, members helped me and I kept on reading until I got to familiarize the process. Also, if you hire a solicitor, the fee is very expensive. I was once quoted with £1,000 which is roughly around PHP64,000. That’s too much! That’s why we decided to do it on our own. But if you have a very straightforward application (i.e. Category A) and both of you are up for it, go do it together. If we did it, why can’t you?
So whenever my husband and I video call on Skype, we talked about the process and the documents we needed. We started on the documents which are easiest for us to obtain like his bank statements, his and my payslips, NSO authenticated birth certificate, NSO CeNoMar, and so on. Then, we proceeded to book my IELTS Lifeskills test and TB test, all in one day in Manila.
Timeline
Engagement Proposal – July 2016
Research about UK visa – August 2016
Started collecting documents/Booked IELTS and TB tests – September 2016
To be continued. Stay tuned on my next post!
Hi Tiffany, I am Gladys from Indonesia, first of all i wanna say thank you so much for sharing such a useful information, you have no idea how much i need this information. Tiffany l, i wanna ask you, where did you give the documents, or where did you process the visa? Was it VFS?? I applied visitor visa before by myself at VFS in Jakarta, but its the same place to process the Visa? Thank you so much. Xx
Hi Gladys, thank you for checking my post! When I processed my fiance visa before, it was in VFS Philippines. Basically, VFS Jakarta will be the same place to apply for your settlement visa.
As far as I'm aware they now have a 'scanning services'. They will scan your documents and send it to Sheffield. I'd advise to check VFS Jakarta, I'm sure there will be an instruction online. Goodluck! xx
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