The others? Too many to list here, but the short version is that I arrived at Dulles International Airport about a half-hour after David’s plane landed (thank you traffic!), I waited anxiously at the gate for the international arrivals. And waited. [...]]]> Joyfulness is one of the words I would describe in David’s homecoming here last month.

The others? Too many to list here, but the short version is that I arrived at Dulles International Airport about a half-hour after David’s plane landed (thank you traffic!), I waited anxiously at the gate for the international arrivals. And waited. And waited…

2 hours later, I saw him come through and I couldn’t help myself: I started bawling. This entire visa journey has been such a roller-coaster of emotions, even though essentially we had normal processing throughout the different divisions in immigration. I think the worst part is the not knowing. When we applied back in August last year, I had no idea when he would get the visa.

Now we are on a new immigration journey, filing for David’s adjustment of status to get a green card, plus a $1,010 check (eep!). We were married in a civil ceremony on June 21st in order to fulfill the visa requirements; my mom and two sisters were able to attend. It was very lovely and pictures can be viewed on facebook.

With the wedding less than 2 months away, we are starting to scramble to make sure that everything is ready. I have finally completed all the invitations (hand-made all of them) and will be mailing them off on Monday. It has been a stressful process through everything, but a thousand times more tolerable with David at my side. I adore him and still can’t believe that he is here and is my husband. I love him so very much : )

How are all of you doing?

There was a point towards the end of the processing that we were in a bit of a “black hole” where the Department of State couldn’t [...]]]> I am so happy to write here that David received his visa on April 16th…took us 243 days from when we sent the initial package off from last August.

There was a point towards the end of the processing that we were in a bit of a “black hole” where the Department of State couldn’t give us any information or estimates on when we would actually get the visa…though I knew it would probably only be a couple of more weeks (though no guarantees), the whole thing freaked me out and I did have a cry at the end. Considering how everything went, I think I was pretty good that I lasted that long, lol!

Now we are looking forwards towards David’s move here, adjusting his status so he can get a green card and become a Permanent Resident, and of course–the wedding! We are going to have the legal wedding done in July because of the legal requirements of the visa; in order to protect David’s status, we have to get legally married by a certain date or risk deportation. While the chance of that is low, I am not willing to take any risks because I worked too hard to get him here : )

Nothing much has happened in the way of wedding news…I’ve sent off the facility/insurance checks to my home parish and have made a contract with a bartender. David hasn’t sent over his saved earnings going towards the wedding yet, but we’re waiting to see how the UK elections turn out because it is fairly likely that they will have a significant impact on the pound to dollar ratio. Currently, it’s about $1.53 to 1 British pound and if the Conservative party wins a large majority, the pound will likely go up, whereas if not, it’s looking like the pound will go down. What sucks is that just about two years ago, the pound was at a ratio of $2 to 1 pound–in our situation, makes a difference of $5,000! Ah, well. Life happens.

My sister, Melanie (maid of honor), will be living in D.C. this summer because she has an internship with Patty Murray (Washington state senator in Congress)! She beat out quite a few applicants, including law students! I am so proud of her and glad that I will have an opportunity to spend some time with her as our lives are going in opposite directions as a result of the whole growing up business. I’m getting married, she’ll be graduating from college and possibly going into the Peace Corps next year, so this is a golden opportunity for us. David isn’t 100% thrilled about sharing me with my sister for the first couple of months of his new life with me, but he definitely understands the importance and supports me fully; it’s not as though she’s going to be living with us after all. I also think it will be a great occasion for the both of them to get to know each other, since they’ve met only once in person and that was three years ago. At the very least, Mel will have some good comedic material for her toast at the reception!

Hope you all are well–does anyone read this? Would love to hear from you, although not the Russian spammers. I’m afraid I must delete you every time you make a comment. I admire your persistence, however!

-Justine

Let me see…well, David passed his medical exam and we finally got an interview date, March 10th. Yesterday I copied a bunch of my financial information and declared officially on the I-134 form that [...]]]> Sorry folks for not updating in such a long time. Lazy excuses abound, but I will not list them here : )

Let me see…well, David passed his medical exam and we finally got an interview date, March 10th. Yesterday I copied a bunch of my financial information and declared officially on the I-134 form that I intend to financially provide for David. When asked the length of time, I wrote “until the death of the beneficiary” haha. It’s true! But I’m sure David will help do some of the providing in the years to come. Legally, it’s for about 10 years and only comes into play if David goes on government welfare assistance. Tomorrow I will be getting a notarized statement saying that I still intend to marry him and then will send everything off in the mail.

David has the rest of his forms in order, his official birth certificate, police certificate, U.S. sized passport photos, etc etc and will arrive electronic gadget free to the embassy and wait on tenderhooks for the interview which he’s all but guaranteed to pass since the UK is a very easy consulate in which to get through.

In wedding news, David and I were in Seattle for a week to meet my relatives and friends. We spent the weekend on a Catholic engaged encounter which was good for our relationship, although we didn’t really learn anything new about each other. I guess when you e-mail each other day you learn each other’s lives and points of view fairly quickly : ) My parents had an engagement party for us when we got back and David met approximately 3592037502 people.

Dad took us snowshoe hiking up at Mt. Rainier, in which I told David, “Now THIS is hiking, dear. Not those scrawny little hills you dragged me along.” Don’t get me wrong, England has beautiful natural scenery with charming villages and hilarious wild goats that run amok along the trail…but being a child of the Pacific Northwest, it’s not hiking to me. It’s…um. Some other term that won’t offend any of David’s relatives or other UK citizens that is escaping my mind right now.

During the rest of the week we spent the days doing wedding plans and the evenings for whichever relatives/friends claimed our time. It got to a point that we were supposed to meet 5 different sets of people all in one night and it just became too much. We ended up seeing 3/5 and finally told everyone else that we’ll have to see them at the wedding. Don’t get me wrong, we loved seeing everyone and would have if we had the time, but alas, we were exhausted and I wanted to spend some alone time with my immediate family.

Wedding plans: We picked out a cake from Affairs Chocolate in University Place, David tried on tuxes (going for the tail coat look), created our table decorations, and bought 15 fake trees about 7 feet in height. HAHA. You cannot imagine how much fun it was to go to Michael’s (a craft store) and line up the trees at the cash register so that one might have been in their own mini-forest. My parents weren’t thrilled about the placement of them into their garage, but Lauren put a few of them in her room and we might convince a relative to store more of them because David and I would love to have another 20 of them at the reception hall. We’re nuts…but you already knew that, didn’t you?

Not much is new this month; David sent off his packet 3 info to the London embassy and now we’re just waiting on an interview. Unfortunately, they only schedule the interviews once a month, so it’ll probably be early January before we find out anything. Next month we’ll be going to Seattle together for [...]]]> Hi folks!

Not much is new this month; David sent off his packet 3 info to the London embassy and now we’re just waiting on an interview. Unfortunately, they only schedule the interviews once a month, so it’ll probably be early January before we find out anything. Next month we’ll be going to Seattle together for an engaged encounter retreat and my parents will be having an engagement party for us, which I am very excited about and he slightly nervous… : )

I’ve moved into my (soon to be ours) new apartment a couple of weeks ago and it is fabulous. Having my own washer/dryer, microwave, dishwasher, and no unsightly creatures is wonderful! It’s a bit more expensive than what I was paying before, but it works out almost evenly since Virginia’s state tax is much lower than D.C. tax.

In wedding news, we’ve decided to scale back the reception (95% sure). I still owe about $17,000 in debt (nearly all student loans at this point) and while I have done wonderfully and paid off from the original balance just over $30k, I took a look at our $20k budget for the wedding that we’ll be paying for in cash and asked David, “Could we really do it? Could we really spend that much money on one day when I’ve got my loans and you’ve got your $18k in your own student loans?” We’re already going to DisneyWorld this summer after going to the opening of the new Harry Potter theme park and it just seemed like a lot of money to spend on just one day. Be rest assured, we’re not going bare bones here, but we’ve managed to trim our budget down to about $13k and will have our reception at the church rather than at the Environmental Service Building.

In the materialistic parts of a wedding, all I really care about are having great pictures and our photographer will let us go to two places besides the church itself so we’ll definitely be getting some wonderful shots; I’m thinking about the Lakewold Gardens and at one of Steilacoom’s beaches : )

Okay kids, make good choices! as Melanie (maid-of-honor) would say. I need to finish setting up my apartment!