Did your families attend your ceremony. Did you live together after your wedding? Why did you not live together and apply inland? You may run into problems doing a civil ceremony just to start the sponsorship process.
Well i explained this thoroughly in the application when we submitted it.
But the main takeaways are:
Both of us are from different sects and grew up differently (family/country). So instead of arguing over which officiant from which side would marry us we kept it neutral and chose a civil ceremony.
We lived together after the wedding but he had to go back as he cannot work in Canada and I had a year of my degree left.
His mother lived in Pakistan at the time and could not come for wedding, his father and brother disapproved of marriage and relationship.
My father had passed, my mother was in attendance.
My siblings did not agree with my relationship either so they were never invited.
It was supposed to be a civil ceremony with my mother, grandmother and friends followed by a dinner thrown from my mother.
My grandfather passed 2 weeks before wedding (he was getting sicker for 2 months - so i have emails of me telling my vendors that we might have to cancel wedding if it came to close).
My mother asked me and husband to cancel wedding, she then asked us to have the wedding since he was coming already and we had payed for mostly everything and just to not have a big celebration after the wedding. My friends were understanding that it was my mothers father and she was our supporter throughout our 4 year relationship so we had to be respectful of her feelings. I then saw him over my break and lived with him in England for 2 weeks and now will go again once situation clears up with covid. I had applied back in December so I'm hoping to show genuine relationships by providing more of our recent visits that happened post submission.
Thats the main points - we didn't do a civil ceremony to just start the process, that was our wedding. It was unfortunate circumstances but i mean i didnt plan on having a large wedding regardless and with so much of our family not okay with our union it didnt make sense.
I did realize it was not usual for people of pakistani background to not have large affairs or religious weddings but i also explained that i grew up here and we have non traditional values so it made sense for us to go this route. Furthermore, us traveling togther 6 times after our initial meeting and living together on these trips was also unorthodox so while im sure they will question it, there was really no other choice for us.
