Hey Everyone!
This forum has been so much help as well as kept me hopeful along my process so I want to share with you my situation in brief along with my timeline.
My partner is a permanent resident and we were together for long distance over a year visiting each other in either country. We applied for the partner based work visa in August 2016 while he was visiting me in my home country and instead of declining it, they granted me a general visitor visa for 8 months to come and get evidence of living together then reapply.
I got some good advice on here that 2 months should be sufficient and so I did just that. I gathered up all the evidence in the two months of my living here and resubmitted the application after 9 weeks and it was approved!
Timeline:
Visa Received: Dec 5 2016
Funds Withdrawn: Dec 6 2016
Online Status Changed to Approved: Dec 8 2016.
We sent the application to the Manukau Branch.
Our evidences included:
-TONS of pictures including other family memebrs
-Snippets of our conversations on facetime video call, whatsapp chat, text messages and skype
-Plane tickets of our various trips to one another
-Plans showing the booking and planning for our wedding.
-Mail coming to the address in NZ in my name
-Joint bank account used weekly.
-Mobil phone plan in both our names to this address
-Support letters from his parents, my parents and two of our friends and his boss.
-His parents added us on the tenancy agreement (which only came through a few weeks before the visa, so it didn't reflect the full 9 weeks i had been at the house)
Copies of receipts to validate purchases made from our joint account.
I think that mostly sums it all up! It really has been an emotional rollercoaster but it can all be worth it!
Pat.