Proving a relationship

[Somerset_Lass]

Hello
I am UK resident, and will be going to marry my fiance in a couple of months in his home country (Venezuela). After which we will apply for a spouse visa.
He is in the UK now, and leaving to head home in the next week or so. I have known him for 17 months. We started dating last autumn, and got more serious from December.
We now need to prove our relationship. We dont live together. I have whats app and facebook messages from December, and I have photos from before that.

I am having conflicting information on what we should present to make a good case and demonstrate our relationship. Any advice is gladly received.
Also, are testimonials worth submitting, and if so what should they contain? I have family, friends and my boss who are all volunteering.

The rest of the paperwork appears more straight forward as it's a list of documents to provide, but the process is so bloody expensive and time consuming, i want to be sure that we present this in the most effective way first time.

Thank you

[Davit]

We submitted the following to prove our relationship which led to a spouse visa being issued so this may help.

Screenshots of whatsapp written conversations, just a few lines in each screenshot with time and date visible and of course your partners name visible ( my wife's first name was only visible in these) . About 1 for each week when we were in a relationship, a couple from when we started talking before relationship.

Screenshots of whatsapp calls again 1 from each week but different days from written conversations. Showing time, date and length of calls.

About 20 photographs from over different times during our 7.5 months we were in a relationship before marriage and about 10 photo's from our wedding day and 2 photo's after wedding.

Provide dates, times and where photo's were taken.

We included some Skype chat logs but these I don't think held much value as they were just plain text log downloads.

Some screenshots of both your facebook profiles where you have information relating to both of you (pic albums, relationship status etc)

We never supplied any testimonials so I can't really comment on how useful they are. The only thing I supplied was a letter to my wife's parents asking for permission to marry her (old fashioned I know).

Provide a cover letter stating how you met, how things developed and how you became an item and how you communicate to keep the relationship strong, be honest with UKVI.

I also supplied receipts from flowers sent, flight ticket stubs and itineraries of all trips.

We never lived together I visited her in her home country, she had never visited the UK and the visa was pretty smooth in processing, 27 days priority.

Hope this helps

[arfinkhan128]

The above evidence used by Davit is solid concrete.
I encourage anyone who is applying soon to stamp dates dates on some of your photos, especially if it’s a long term relationship. There are apps such as TimeStampIt etc for smartphone users to be able do this.