COngrats everyone! It seems like so many have received their DM's this week!
Just ten more hours until my husband has his interview...
We have gone over and over our application, we know eachother very well, and he is bringing 500 pages of communication proof with him. Very confident.
What we know is going to be asked about it:
Visa overstay in a different country,( he was planning to return to nepal but then a big political strike started and his parents requested he stay in Australia until it was safer to return. )
He is Nepali and Hindu, I am Native Canadian and Ukrainian crossed and I do not label myself with any religion, though I do believe in the spirit of nature as he does.
We married just 3 months after meeting, but we knew we would be married the first time we met, we both just burst out laughing because we both said, "You know we're getting married, right?". But we know that in my culture having a longer courtship is the usual, where as in his 3 months is plenty enough time, so they will ask why I was ok with such a short time period.
Non-traditional wedding, just us, friends, and the registrar. We were in australia and his family did not approve and mine could not afford to come and decided to just send us money as a gift to continue our traveling (we honeymooned in nepal for 2 months afterwards) instead of spending it on their own plane tickets. But it was unique to us, not just a court wedding. we all dressed up and had the ceremony on the rocks overhanging into the ocean near the Great Barrier Reef. Lots of photos of very sweet moments : ). And we are planning to have a traditional hindu wedding in Nepal after a few more years when his parents are more comfortable with it, they are much more accepting than they were two years ago.
I have not met his parents, at all, no phone, text, skype, or in person. They refused to meet me and were embarrassed that their son married a "white" girl. Caused a lot of hardship for my husband (and me, I want to make them happy!), and we said that in our application. But they are now regretting the decision to refuse meeting me and are communicating through my husband to talk with me now and apologize for their initial reaction to the marriage.
And lastly, we forgot to put the bio-data on his immigration photo haha We sent new ones when we realized in September but do not know if they received them.
So! Lots of questions will be asked but we are prepared and confident.
edit: Also confident because I was able to visit him in Nepal recently, though we did not see any family during that time, only us together after 14 months apart. But we have all our hotel receipts for a month, restaurant receipts, trekking permits, bus tickets, etc. I wish I could have attended the interview with him, but they sent the request e-mail two days AFTER I arrived, and it is financially impossible for me to take an additional 3 weeks off of work to go with him, I would have missed paying my rent for the next month and risked losing my job if I had done so.