Urgent - Marriage notice

[Janey142]

Hello!

Myself and my partner are giving notice tomorrow, and it will be a couple of days shy of the maximum 12 weeks. Issue is, he's in a bit of a limbo with his immigration status so i'm not sure what to put.

Situation in brief:
Has lived in the UK with his Dutch father for 5 years as of 8 Feb 2019 who is his EU sponsor
His EEA is up in Sept 2019 due to when it was issued
He was entitled to apply with his dad for perm residency at this time but as there are massive delays with South African passports being renewed, he only got it today 11 March instead of January (thanks to me nagging- they had originally said delayed until mid April)
As the settlement scheme went into testing his dad went and applied under the settlement scheme last month and got it approved in a day
My partner can apply on 30 March as his Residence card isn't biometric, and link it to his dads with the reference

.. on the marriage notice it says is he perm under eea4 or settled.. well he is technically perm as the 5 years has elapsed hes doing the settlement route 30 March..

I am hesitant to wait until 30 March as you are meant to give 10-12 weeks in case it gets referred to home office. The irony is if we wait until 30 March and all being well he gets settlement great, but if there are delays to the scheme opening up or any issues and it gets refereed anyway, it could lead to us having to postpone the wedding for the investigation (we have family flying over from the states and it's quite a big wedding).

It's so annoying because had there not been the passport delays from SA side he would have his PR by now. I don't think there's a point putting one in now as settlement will be much more straight forward and don't want to risk not having his passport etc back to do it.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated