What did you provide as supporting documents?

[ColorMePanda]

I don't know, I am starting to feel a bit inadequate as far as evidence and documents go.
What are they looking for exactly? I mean what actually proves you are genuine?

Anyway, what documents did you include and were you approved?

 

[canadianwoman]

I included photos of our wedding and of us with his family and friends and in his hometown and his 'ancestral hometown'; phone bills; a few emails (all we had); proof of my visits to see him.
It wasn't enough, as his application was rejected.

 

[heatherusa]

@ Canadianwoman - how long have you been married?

 

[al4ya]

you need to include:
Pictures of the wedding and other general pictures at different times and different places and occasions
Phone bills
Emails and conservations of msn or yahoo (if possible)
Airline tickets to see each others
Stamps on both passports to prove that you visited each others
Copy of cards or gifts sent between you guys
Joint bank accounts if possible
anything relates you together and you think it may help

Thanks

 

[ColorMePanda]

Thank you for giving me a general idea. I appreciate it.

 

[al4ya]

Your most welcome!!

 

[canadianwoman]

@ Canadianwoman - how long have you been married?

I met him in 2001 when we were both working in another country. We got married in October, 2007. His application was rejected in May, 2009.
After doing research, such as reading posts on this forum, I can see we did not have enough evidence in the application.
One problem is that we were dating each other in a foreign country (not Canada, and not his country) from 2001 to 2005, but we had no evidence from that time in the application. When I moved back to Canada, I didn't keep things like old phone bills and receipts. Who would? I certainly never knew at the time that one day we would need them.

 

[dlee31]

When I moved back to Canada, I didn't keep things like old phone bills and receipts. Who would? I certainly never knew at the time that one day we would need them.

I agree. Unless you're dating someone with the intention of collecting "proof of your relationship" for a visa in the future or you're one of those people who just likes saving everything in general, it's really hard to get the evidence together. When my husband and I were dating long-distance, we used phone cards which are toll free and therefore do not leave a record on your phone bill (Korean phone companies also only keep call records for up to 6 months). I realize providing proof of a genuine relationship is important, but I think it's wrong that so much can depend on it. I'm also nervous about our application, which has been in process for 4 months, because we didn't have any phone records to attach and only a few emails and lots of photos. And I am not one of those people who save every gift or card I receive

 

[chitotolo]

My wife and I had a long distance relationship, but we made it. We sent them:

Pictures from our church wedding
The invitation to our wedding
pictures of our 2 other vacations
pictures of us with our families
plane tickets, bus tickets, boat tickets and hotel receipts
phone bills, IM chats, Skype out phone record
Copies of our passport with the stamps

Give them anything to prove that your relationship is true and standing. Thank God for the internet because My wife and I talk at least 6 hours a day but we have only been physically together for a total of 2 months. We gave all the evidence we had that we are indeed married and now I'm just finishing my business and I'll join her in Canada around July.

 

[sbwv09]

I haven't sent in my app yet, but another item I was told to include are notorized letters from friends and family from both sides, testifying that the relationship is true. I plan on including one from my future MIL in particular, since it will provide proof that I spent all of last summer with him. We have very little evidence of this time spent together, since we were together there are no phone records, etc. I stayed in his house and drove myself, so no tickets, and being from the US they didn't stamp my passport. We have emails all the way back to 2003, some phone bills, bank statements with lots of purchases from Canada, some hotel reciepts and bus reciepts when he came to see me, LOTS of pics, cards, etc. Another problem is that I had a house fire in 2007 and lost a lot of stuff before that, but I included an explaination of this. Hopefully this will be enough. Do you think I should include the fire report from the house fire? I think we have a pretty large amount of evidence as is, but who knows...

 

[Berti]

We printed photos from our wedding, honeymoon, vacations (a few of them), photos from parties or concerts, photos with friends, work colleagues, etc and sent in a whole bunch of photos each with a left to right explanation of who's in the photo, date and place.

We also included emails sent to each other. Wedding invites, vacation reservation and plane trip subs, etc

 

[G Kann]

Thanks for all the replies here. The information is very helpful.

 

[matthewc]

See also OP2 5.26 and 5.35:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/manuals/op/op02-eng.pdf

 

[fruittropics]

Hi All

I understand sometimes we do not keep everything.
So here's my suggestion which I'm not sure if it played a huge part in my process being approved very smoothly and quickly but here's what my husband and I did.

We each wrote an essay of how we knew each other, met and what we did along the years, places we went together and people we met or things we did together. You may feel free to insert pictures in your essay to support e.g. place you visited together. (add this essay to the application form that has the question how did you know each other... etc.) It says on the bottom last page that you can include additional information on another page anyway.

Because we each individually wrote our own essay it said alot about how the timelines are in tuned and we genuinely had these memories not only photos. It helps to paint a picture of the development of our relationship made easy for whoever reads it to understand. We each had about 6pages worth of essays though most of it were photos inserted.

Good luck!

In addition we included photos, cityhall wedding photos (we didn't have a grand; planned to have it later), print screen photos of our msn chats, parts of msn chat logs, bank transfers if any money was sent, boarding tickets/etickets/ itineraries, cards and well wishes from friends addressed to us both, copies of our passport with the stamps, emails, copies of any cards we made each other or gifts. P.S. not too late to make those cards now and backdate!

 

[AllisonVSC]

We wrote our essay together. It was one of the enjoyable parts of filling out the application. We did a rough draft of our timeline and submitted it with our essay because it showed that we worked together on it...it had both our handwriting.

We also listed each other as beneficiaries on our life insurance policies. I would recommend (though we didn't do it) writing/updating your wills to include your partner and making a living will that designates medical decision making powers in case you are incapacitated.