Spouse Visa - some questions

[sidgirl]

Hello. I've been browsing this board and it seems there are many helpful people out there and I've seen the answers to most of my questions regarding spouse visas but it would be great to get some advice on my particular situation.

I'm an Australian citizen, currently in the UK on a working holiday visa (just scraped in under the age!). I've been here just over a year and to my surprise and delight an old romance fired up again and we're getting married in Australia in January. My fiance is a dual UK/Australian citizen and has been living in the UK for the last 7 years (he was originally born in Scotland, moved to Australia age 10). I say old romance because we were together (and indeed lived together) in Australia for a couple of years, some ten years ago now.

Since that first relationship we remained friends and kept in touch, albeit sometimes fairly infrequently. When I decided to apply for a working holiday visa, he offered a room in the flat we are still renting. There was no question of romance at this time but it was only around 4 months later that he proposed. I've since entered the UK a couple of times, on the working holiday visa, most recently after we both returned from a trip to Australia to make some wedding arrangements in July.

I've seen the useful list of documents posted (sorry, I don't know how to link to another post but it is recent and called 'Spouse Visa - Advice/Reassurance + AfterApplication?' in this section) but have a couple of questions:

1. I am planning to apply online to Canberra post wedding. Would it be more useful to travel there personally?

2. Should I have informed UK immigration/Home Office of my marriage intentions/applied for a fiance visa? Might this be an issue for my application?

3. Re relationship: should we provide evidence of our first relationship to show that the relative speed of our current one is not of convenience?

4. Re finances: my fiance is self-employed and bank statements show a good income. I've only worked for around six months altogether, temping through agencies in finance/law. This means he has already supported me in London and can afford to do so - I think this will help but any tips on supporting documentation? We don't currently have any savings that aren't slated for the wedding and associated costs (flights, honeymoon, spending money in Aus etc)

5. Re accommodation: we have lived together alone in our current rented flat since I arrived. As we plan on being in Australia for a minimum of three months, we have decided to put things into storage, give up the flat and not pay rent while we're away. Some good friends of ours have already offered to let us stay with them when we return till we find another flat. They own their house and have a spare bedroom. They are a married couple and one is definitely a UK citizen, the other I'm not sure whether he's a citizen or has ILR. I read on a different post that we might need a copy of their house deed and/or mortgage - is this right? (I don't want to turn a simple offer of a place to stay into a bureaucratic nightmare!) What other sorts of evidence might we need from them? Would it be easier to leave them out of it and book a place to stay (although we haven't decided quite what date we're coming back)?

6. Lastlly, we have been toying with the idea of living elsewhere (probably EU) for six months post wedding to take advantage of not having a flat to come back to immediately. How might this affect the spouse visa? I saw that it's best to enter the UK within 28 days, and that you can get the visa post dated for up to three months on the application. Is the position the same if we delay entering (ie don't enter for six months) or if we enter then leave for six months?

Sorry for the length of this post, I just wanted to give as much detail as required to save you time in posting. Any advice comments will be greatly appreciated.
[/quote]