visa 300 prospective marriage advice please - time spent apart

[Guest Damo86]

Hi all,

 

myself (australian citizen) and my partner (UK citizen) are going through our paperwork (evidence etc) and about to apply for a 300 prospective marriage visa.

 

We met in aus, lived there and in the UK and Ireland together for 1 total of 19 months. In december of 2009 my partner left australia as we could not get the visa we wanted (de-facto - as we hadnt quite made the 2 years.

...and so we decided for me to stay in aus and attend university, and for her to go home to england also for university.

 

In April we decided this was a bad idea and we definately did want to be together, so 2 weeks ago i flew here (UK) -- however am quite worried that this 5 months of us being techically seperated will hinder our chances of the visa being granted.

 

~ might it be smarter to simply get married now while im in the UK and then apply for the onshore partner visa? Ideally not but I'd hate to lose the AUD$1705 application charge due to this technicality. We genuinely do love and want to be with eachother and time is of the essence as im sure many of you can apprciate.

 

any advice would be greatly appreciated as we are now quite apprehensive!

 

Thanks in advance,

Damo