... in response to Marrying in the States, posted by littlebhuddha on Jan 27, 2003I decided to go the same course as you. My fiancée is Brazilian, and has her tourist visa to travel to the US. We were looking at getting married in Brazil this upcoming March 7th, but it was proving to be very time consuming, costly, and frustrating. After acquiring all the paper work the marriage office in Brazil requests of a foreigner, I went to the Brazilian Consulate in Houston to get it all legalized (government offices in Brazil will not accept foreign documents unless they have been legalized at a Brazilian consulate prior to leaving the US and then translated by an official Brazilian translator service in Brazil). At $20 a pop, it cost $80 to have them legalized. It was then going to cost another $150 to get them translated into Portuguese. Thankfully, my fiancée took the papers to the marriage office before having them translated. They told her that they wanted two more documents from me (keep in mind, I had followed their original request to the letter). The marriage office requires all paperwork to be in at least 40 days before the wedding date, and we were already pushing this date pretty close. My fiancée argued with them that it would be impossible for me to get the other 2 documents, have them legalized (another $40) and send them to Brazil in time to meet the 40 day requirement. “No problem”, they said, “for a small $100 penalty fee, in addition to the $200 charge for processing the paperwork ($350 total), then we can waive the 40 day requirement”. How convenient and nice of them I thought. It was going to cost another $200 to pay a government official to perform the ceremony. So I am now up to about $820, and we haven’t even talked to about how much it would cost to get the paperwork ready to send to the INS (having the marriage licensed translated back into English so we could submit it to the INS office would run about $300 or so). Also, we would be faced with the dilemma of submitting all her paperwork to the Rio de Janeiro office and then waiting for approval. She would most likely have to wait in Brazil until approved and then join me when she could. We thought about having her come to the US on her tourist visa after the wedding, but technically this would be illegal since her last name would no longer be what is on her passport (after the marriage) and we would be circumventing the Spousal visa laws by doing this. After all this, I decided to call my local County Clerk and see what the marriage procedure would be here. In Texas, the both of you need to show up at the Clerks office and state your desire to get married. You can show your driver’s license, birth certificate, or passport. If you are a US citizen, you need to show your Social Security card. If you are a foreign national marrying a US citizen, you need only show your passport. You then pay $35 dollars to the County Clerk and receive your marriage license. You schedule an appointment with a Justice of the Peace (you must wait 3 days for the marriage license to become valid in Texas, and it is good for 30 days) and pay whatever fee they charge on the day of the wedding (between $25 to $50). That is it! I asked if there were any complications because my fiancée was a foreign national and the clerk said no, as long as she has a valid passport issued from her country everything was fine. I then called the INS main office and asked them if there were any complications involved if my fiancée came into the US on a tourist visa and we decided to get married. He told me that as long as she came into the country legally, had a round trip ticket to go back to her country of origin, that if we decided to get married it was up to us. We would have to file the normal paperwork to the INS that is associated with the process of establishing citizenship here (I-130 and I-485). Once the INS office received and began processing the I-485 form (change of status) she no longer needed to return back to her country of origin as stated on her return ticket. She could stay in the US for the duration of the approval (or heaven forbid – disapproval) of her request of immigration and change of status. So, to get married here, it would cost us $60 in marriage fees, a return airline voucher, and whatever the INS charges for processing a spousal visa. After doing the math I talked it over with my fiancée and we decided to compromise. We would hold a ceremony in Brazil with all the trimmings, but not get officially married. We would buy her a round trip ticket from Sao Paulo to Dallas ($830) with a return date 90 days from the time we left (her visa allows her to stay here for 90 days at a time). She would return with me on March 12th and we would apply for our marriage license on March 14th. We would get married March 20th and then head up to the INS office in Dallas to submit all our paperwork on March 21st. Then wait and cross our fingers! If all goes well, we can throw away her return ticket to Brazil and live happily ever after!
