A few points of clarity:
It takes 11 months to get the open work permit if you apply with your PR application. Either inland or outland, of you can find an employer that is willing to sponsor you and can get an LMO, or if you qualify for a TN, you could apply for a work permit separately and theoretically have it sooner.
If you want to stay in Canada, make sure you stay legal! Applying for your PR, either inland or outland, doesn't mean you can automatically stay in Canada until it's finished. As am American, you can usually stay for up to 6 months at a time before you have to either leave or apply to extend your stay. Extensions are almost always granted, but it's not 100% guaranteed.
For starting your application, I'd recommend starting with
this post by Leon, it's very good. The basic procedure is:
- Download all the forms. Fill them all out. Get really sick of paperwork.
- Get your medical. Get annoyed that medicals are expensive.
- Get your FBI background check. Be annoyed that it takes 2 months to get back a single sheet of paper stating "No records found"
- Get copies of necessary documents, like your birth and marriage certificates. Get annoyed when a mail strikes makes your marriage certificate take 2 months to get there.
- Assemble your relationship evidence.
- Organize everything, and mail it.
- Wait. Wish really hard that you had some kind of progress bar because even a few months feels like forever when you're waiting.
- Get notified of sponsorship approval. Yay!
- Wait more. Are you sick of waiting yet?
- Get your PPR, yay! Mail off your passport (or photocopies), get your visa.
- Land. You're a PR now!
1. Next time I visit, do I say to immigration that I'm visiting my boyfriend?
2. When we plan to get married, do I tell immigration?
If you want. Don't outright lie to them, though.
3. Will it look bad if we spontaneously get married?
What you've described, with a few friends/family attending, shouldn't look bad at all, especially as you will have known each other for 3 years at that point.
4. If we get married, my boyfriend would like me to just stay while the process of the application, but it is to my understanding its faster to applying from outland. Does anyone know is it better to apply from inland or outland?
Apply outland! But I think you already know that, by the time I'm typing this post
5. What evidence will immigration need to prove our marriage or relationship? Photos? I have photos.
6. It is to my understanding that they question you and your spouse through an interview? what do they ask?
For evidence, anything that shows you're in a relationship. Get creative, and don't include just one kind of evidence. Photos, letters/postcards, emails, facebook screenshots, phone logs, boarding passes or passport stamps from you visiting each other, joint bank accounts, listing each other as beneficiaries on insurance policies, poems you wrote for each other, pets you adopted together, receipts from gifts you bought each other, money you sent each other, the Christmas card your mom sends out announcing your engagement, anything goes!
In the very unlikely case that you are called to an interview, order your notes. This will tell you why you've been called to an interview, which will help you prepare for it.
