Hi Ed,

We were married in Camsur province on 11th January. We tried to do things as fast as we could and my wife finally got her passport back with the spouse visa in it on 5th June. She had a few things to sort out there so I will go to Manila to collect her this weekend, but she could have flown on 7th June if she was ready and wanted to.

This visa application itself took 52 *working* days from VFS appointment (18th March) to the email saying her visa was on its way (4th June). That is pretty close to the 12 weeks target time. I get the impression from recent postings that some people are getting them a bit quicker now, so maybe they are clearing a backlog. But that is just my guess, I have no real information.

The 2 month delay from the wedding to to the visa application was mostly due to having to get the NSO marriage certificate. It took about 2 weeks for the certificate to get from the church to the local registry office (more or less across the road). The local registry office then have to send it to the NSO local office, who then have to send it to the NSO in Manila who then have to manually search their records before issuing the official copy. We had been told that this could take up to 4 months.

However, there is an NSO procedure called "advance endorsment" which is documented on the NSO's "ecensus" website FAQs. This the local registry office to courier it dircetly to the NSO in manila (you have to pay for the courier). You then order the NSO copy on the "ecensus" website and email them with your courier details. They will then start their search as soon as they get it. It took us about a week to get the local registry office to do this (the only person who understood it was on holiday), and then it took about 3 weeks from when the NSO received the courier package to them sending the certificates.

Of course, if you are in metro Manila it may all be a bit simpler.

Hope that is some help. It is just our experience. Every case is different of course.

Good luck,

Martin & Aileen.