The choice that matters, made before you apply
There are two routes for marrying in the UK and they lead to completely different places. Choosing wrongly is one of the most expensive mistakes in family immigration.
Marriage Visitor visa. You come, you marry, you leave. You cannot work, cannot access public funds, and cannot switch to another visa from inside the UK. After the wedding you go home. If you then want to live in the UK together, you apply for a spouse visa from abroad, with everything that involves — the financial requirement, the English test, the evidence, the fee and the wait.
Fiancé, fiancée or proposed civil partner visa. Granted under Appendix FM, this is for couples who intend to marry and then settle in the UK. It gives six months to marry, and once married you switch in-country to a spouse visa and begin the five-year route to settlement. It has the harder requirements — the financial requirement and English at A1 — but it leads somewhere.
The pattern we see is a couple choosing the Marriage Visitor visa because it is cheaper and simpler, marrying, and then discovering they cannot stay. At that point the only option is for the visiting spouse to leave the UK and apply from their home country, which means separation for months.
If you intend to build a life here, the fiancé route is almost certainly what you want, and the time to establish that is before either application is made.
What you must show
The requirements combine the ordinary visitor tests with proof that the marriage is genuine and actually arranged.
- A genuine relationship Evidence of the relationship over time, as with any family application — correspondence, visits, photographs across the span of it, and communication.
- Concrete wedding arrangements A booked venue, a date, and correspondence with the registrar. A general intention to marry at some point is not enough.
- That you are both free to marry Divorce decrees or death certificates where either of you has been married before, with certified translations.
- That you will leave The ordinary genuine visitor test — ties to your home country, finances, and a coherent plan for after the wedding.
- Funds without working Enough for the visit, the wedding and the return, with no recourse to public funds.
Giving notice, and the referral scheme
Anyone subject to immigration control who wants to marry in England or Wales must give notice at a designated register office, and both parties must attend in person.
Where one party is subject to immigration control and does not have settled status, a qualifying visa or certain other statuses, the notice is referred to the Home Office under the referral scheme. That extends the notice period, and during it the Home Office may investigate whether the marriage is genuine — which can include contact, interviews or a visit.
This is entirely normal and nothing to be alarmed about if the relationship is genuine. What it does mean is that the timetable is longer than couples expect, and a wedding date booked without allowing for it can be difficult.
Plan the notice period into the schedule from the start rather than discovering it when the venue is already booked.
After the wedding
You leave the UK before your visa expires. That is the deal.
If you want to live together in the UK, the visiting spouse applies for a spouse visa from outside the UK under Appendix FM. Being married helps — it removes the two-year cohabitation requirement that unmarried partners face — but everything else applies in full: the financial requirement, English at A1, adequate accommodation and evidence of a genuine relationship.
Overstaying instead is a serious mistake. It affects the spouse application you are about to make, it has to be declared on every future application, and it is entirely avoidable.
The practical advice is to start preparing the spouse application before the wedding rather than after. The financial evidence in particular has qualifying periods, and a couple who begin gathering it the month after they marry are already months from being able to apply.