After a couple of impromptu wedding proposal (one that sadly include the lost of my first engagement ring), Prince Charming and I finally ready to embark on the greatest journey of all: Marriage. But first we need to decide on how to get me to US.
Decidedly, my happily ever after cannot be done in Indonesia. Prince Charming has a good solid work in US and I would be hard pressed to find a job that matched his qualifications in Indonesia, therefore the only solution for us to be together is to move me there instead. After much thinking we decided to proceed with K1 fiancee visa. His main reasoning was because with a K1 visa I am allowed to come to US for a period of time before getting married to him, that is if I decided to marry him. He pointed out gracefully that it means I am free to bolt err return if I decided I don't or can't cope up with US. It is much better, he said, than getting married and use K3 spouse visa, because if I come to US after our wedding and decided I can't live there we might have to live separately across 2 different continents. I have to agree with him wholeheartedly.
A couple other reasons on why we decided a K1 visa is because it is faster to be processed, and Indonesia only acknowledge a wedding where the couple have the same religion. For my part, I do not wish for him to suddenly switch to Balinese Hindu just for the sake of marrying me. Of course if one day he is ready and wanted to do so I have no problem with that, but not now as he only know very little about Balinese Hindu. The other way is to have a wedding somewhere else (e.g. Singapore or Thailand), then apply K3 visa. As you can see, this is highly inefficient, so K1 it will be.
As a true blue American, Prince Charming never even thought of getting me there illegally. It also showed how much he really appreciate me and that he saw me as equal. The K1 visa ensures that I will be well taken care of, because if he didn't have enough income to sponsor me until I got my work permit the visa will not be issued at all. This really rest my mind and ease my fears, because I have heard far too many stories where women from my country get courted by foreigners, taken to his home country, and discarded like dirty washcloths. And with so many foreigners (men and women alike) that stayed and make their living illegally in Bali I can understand completely why American thinks illegal immigrant is such a big no-no. Trust me, I feel it too.
Luckily, even though the paperwork for K1 Visa seemed daunting and downright excruciating, it was not impossible to be done; and we manage to do it ourselves without surrendering to lawyer. The complete details of what needed will be written in the next article. Keep on reading!
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