Hi, everyone! I've been a long-time lurker here and it has helped a lot in getting my Canadian TRV approved.
Now, it is due time for me to ask since I've been lurking for pretty much 5 months now and couldn't find something that suits my situation.
- I am currently in the US under J1 visa, will be here for another year
- My boyfriend is a naturalized Canadian citizen, we are both Filipinos
- We've been dating for about 2 years, we met back in the Philippines
- We take turns visiting each other, I have been to Canada twice and he has since visited me twice here in the US - we met up once in Seattle while I was applying for Canadian TRV
- Both our families know and are very well aware (and very approving!) of our relationship
Given the details above, we are now engaged and are planning to get married. We want to get married in Canada this year, civil ceremony with his family and close friends (none of my family can attend as they are back in the Philippines but has given us their blessings) And once my program year in the US ends, we plan to have a church wedding back in the Philippines with the rest of my family and his. After our church wedding, we plan to proceed with the spousal visa application so I can follow him back to Canada. So my questions are as follows:
- Do we need to provide AOM if we have a marriage certificate issued in Canada?
- We do plan to report the marriage to the Philippine Consulate in Vancouver, would that mean our marriage will be registered in the Philippines meaning CENOMAR is no longer applicable to us?
- We will apply outland, but can we just provide the NSO marriage certificate (once reported) and the Canadian Marriage Certificate without the AOM?
- Did anyone submit a spousal application without submitting AOM and got approved?
I heard asking for AOM takes time and would want to know if we can skip that part to save us the time as we are both not in the Philippines to process the documents.
Thank you for taking the time in reading this! Hope y'all have a good one!