That's a PITA

I think I'll have to put my trip to canada on hold. I had planned to travel from the 20th to the 27th. However, the Home Office has put a damper on those plans.

We sent in an application for a certificate of approval, which is required to start the wedding registration process. I need that because I'm an evil Canadian and I want to get married on British soil. The forms say that it takes between 3 weeks and 3 months to get it. However, the form says that I can ask for my passport back if I need to travel.

What the form doesn't say is that it takes 10 working days to get my documents back if I send a fax to ask for them (so it's not even guaranteed that I get the flippin' passport back if I send the fax in today). The request *can* be expedited, but there's still no guarantee that I'll have my passport back on the day I need to travel.

Also, asking for my passport invalidates my ongoing request, which means that I'll need to submit a new CoA form when I come back. This also means that I'll have to pay another as the application fee is not refundable.

What I'm thinking of doing is waiting until the last possible moment to see if I get my application through. In theory, they say that it should be resolved within 3 weeks (and it'll be 3 weeks this Friday). If I'm lucky, I'll get everything back in time. If I see that it's not going to arrive, I'll call Air Canada and have my travel dates pushed back. The tickets are not refundable but there is a slight fee to have the dates pushed back (we did this with katy when she came in otcober 2004).

All signs point that this is going to be one of them weeks…