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Which marriage certificate to use????
Hi all,
I'm a green card holder and trying to sponsor my wife a green card. We are currently living in US and got married earlier this year in Kerala, India. We had a christian wedding on July 1st and received a marriage certificate from the church. We took that marriage certificate to Gram Panchayath and got a marriage certificate issued from them with the July 1st date. The gram panchayath certificate has our photo and official seal of the panchayath president and kerala government. However there is no word India mentioned anywhere in that document and so we were not sure if this certificate would considered to be legit.
Since we have read that an official marriage certificate is important for green card processing and due to not being sure of the legitimacy of gram panchayath certificate, we went to a sub registrar office and got the marriage registered again under the Cochin Christian Special marriage act law. This certificate is printed and sealed in an official Indian stamp paper and so looks to be the most genuine. But the registration happened on July 10th and hence this certificate from the Registrar office show marriage date as July 10th.
Now here is my confusion. What documentation will I provide as marriage certificate?
1) Should I provide the sub registrar July 10th certificate and church certificate July 1st along with an addendum showing that church wedding happened on July 1st and official registration happened on the 10th? I have read that we have to attach wedding invite as proof for bonafide marriage and hence I don't want USCIS to be confused seeing two different dates
2) Just provide the church certificate along with gram panchayath certificate and forget about the sub registrar certificate from July 10th. Anyone has any experience doing this and being fine??
Apologize for the long post and hopefully the pros in this site can help me.
Thanks
I'm a green card holder and trying to sponsor my wife a green card. We are currently living in US and got married earlier this year in Kerala, India. We had a christian wedding on July 1st and received a marriage certificate from the church. We took that marriage certificate to Gram Panchayath and got a marriage certificate issued from them with the July 1st date. The gram panchayath certificate has our photo and official seal of the panchayath president and kerala government. However there is no word India mentioned anywhere in that document and so we were not sure if this certificate would considered to be legit.
Since we have read that an official marriage certificate is important for green card processing and due to not being sure of the legitimacy of gram panchayath certificate, we went to a sub registrar office and got the marriage registered again under the Cochin Christian Special marriage act law. This certificate is printed and sealed in an official Indian stamp paper and so looks to be the most genuine. But the registration happened on July 10th and hence this certificate from the Registrar office show marriage date as July 10th.
Now here is my confusion. What documentation will I provide as marriage certificate?
1) Should I provide the sub registrar July 10th certificate and church certificate July 1st along with an addendum showing that church wedding happened on July 1st and official registration happened on the 10th? I have read that we have to attach wedding invite as proof for bonafide marriage and hence I don't want USCIS to be confused seeing two different dates
2) Just provide the church certificate along with gram panchayath certificate and forget about the sub registrar certificate from July 10th. Anyone has any experience doing this and being fine??
Apologize for the long post and hopefully the pros in this site can help me.
Thanks
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