H1B marrying US citizen in India

We got married in US first and then went to India for the wedding, mostly because we wanted to file our tax returns jointly in that tax year. The pastor who performed our Indian wedding didn't ask for any such things as previous marriages, etc. In India registered pastors can give a marriage certificate that would be equivalent to getting it from registrar. Even though we had our Indian marriage certificate we never considered using that for the immigration purposes.

BTW, getting married in US legally is very easy; In Colorado you apply for a marriage license, you will get the license right there. Once you have the license, make an appointment with a judge and get married. Turn-in the marriage license to the County clerk & recorder for registering your marriage. You will get back the registered marriage certificate in the mail in 5 - 10 days.

Just because Indian bureaucracy is a little too much and most of the law is not clear, we never considered getting a marriage certificate from India. The fact that we got a certificate is some thing my dad coordinated. Of course, every ones circumstances are different. As somebody else suggested, looks like you can use the Indian marriage certificate for US immigration purposes.

We just filed for our AOS package, almost a year after our US marriage ... Hope everything goes well.
 
thanks nickkoll for useful response. We also want to file joint tax return this year and it just so happened that our Indian marriage and American marriage are in different year. We would be back in US before end of year and as others have mentioned, Indian wedding would be legal here as well so we can hoefully file joint tax return.

It was short sight on our side that we didnt think of getting married here in US before going to India and that was mainly because our official american wedding is in 2007 and everything was planned as per that. Now, I feel its too late to do a registered marriage here there is lot to do and we leave in 15 days for india..happy and somewhat tensed as well.

hope all goes smooth and well.
 
usnycus said:
Carrying wedding card, photos etc. and bribing someone ---- Don’t you think that could be hassle to many.

In NY, you only need an ID and two witness.
Click to expand...

Is it not less hassle then creating artificial marriage here in the US? If they married here They ask for photographs and attendee list etc. suspicions of fraud is more here in US then an wedding in India.
 
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