Spouse visa questions

Greetings all,

My long-term civil partner and I are planning to emigrate to the UK this year from Canada. He is a dual citizen and I am Canadian. After reading through volumes of PDF files and such I am still left with some confusion about a few things. We haven’t bothered with a marriage ceremony as there was never a need to do so, but my understanding is that it might mean less of a headache to do so before applying for a visa. We have never had or needed a joint bank account as we were both in the bar industry and always had cash kicking about. Would it be wise to open a joint bank account just for the sake of having one? By marrying in Canada will this create any complications in the process? My understanding is that civil partnerships are recognised in both countries, Do we still have to apply for approval of the marriage in the UK? On the VAF2 form Section 6 it asks for a UK address where we intend to live. I have no idea how that should be answered as we are not in the UK yet. Is this likely to create problems for the visa application? I would think normally you’d find cheap accommodation somewhere until we both had steady work and could look for a more long-term residence. Provided the visa was granted, would we then just need to report where we are residing after we settle into a place? Lastly, in the case that we are required to have an interview, are they flexible on booking a time, we are both working extremely long hours to save up money, and it would be difficult to fly off to Ottawa without much notice.

Sorry for the long post, and thank you for taking the time to read it.

Steven