schenghen visa - London French embassy...advice needed

[babloogirl]

I don't know if it is the right place to post but I need some advice,

My husband and I are planning to go on holiday to France in August. He had an appointment last week, but was turned away since we do not have "le livret de famille" which is a blue book in which you get your children registered/divorce/death (you do get it when you get married in France).

Anyway, we got married in the UK in January 2009, after receiving the authorization from UK home office since my husband is from Pakistan.

Now looking on the French embassy website, we should have also ask the permission to get married from the french embassy (we both live and work in the UK).

So Monday we are having 3 appointments at the embassy (one to register myself as a french person in the UK, another to get our marriage transcribed onto the french registers, and finally one for the visa).

Surely, they can not deny the fact that we are married?

And because we provided them with all the documents requested on the website, I really don't understand why they turned him away... (I could be belgium married to a pakistani man and they wouldn't ask for this "livret de famille" and accept the visa application...

They can not say that our marriage isn't legal since it was done according to the UK law and consequently refuse him the visa as an EEA family member (which is what is stated on his UK residence card)?

I am really unsure on how it works.

Has anyone come accross problems at the french embassy?

Or has anyone some knowledge in this area?

Thank you

[ViveLaFrak]

We got married in the UK (Brit/French) and had to fill in forms before and after to get our livret de famille.

They can't say you're not married as long as you have a UK marriage certificate.

They might kick up a fuss if you don't have the extraits/birth certificates that are less than 3 months old but if your husband's was issued at birth then you will need to explain very patiently, several times, that it's not how it works in Pakistan. You will also need to make sure it's translated according to their rules.

The thing at the moment is from the French POV they don't know your married basically! It was relatively simple, if slightly lengthy, for us to sort out though. Requires a fair amount of paper - take everything you might conceivably need in case they ask to see it - and a lot of patience. If you have to see a woman with the initials CG then I hope she's more efficient for you than for us.

Are you planning to visit France? And if not, does it matter which country you get the Schengen visa from?

I feel the issue here is that you're French and didn't play by the rules so the system can't cope. It doesn't really have a mechanism for dealing with people forgetting things or not having the piece of paper.

[babloogirl]

Thanks for your reply,

I honestly had no idea that I had to inform the french system I was getting married in the UK since I was living in the UK for 3 years already,

We are just planning a 2 weeks holiday to France, not to live there permanently.

I think with a schenghen visa, you have to request it from the first country you will be entering so if I was to request it from Spain, we would first have to travel to Spain and then to France...

We will see how it goes tomorrow...and I hope that I won't see the CG lady.

[ViveLaFrak]

Yeah we had no idea either until people started asking for forms that we didn't have, so we googled! If it hadn't been for that we wouldn't have known.

Good luck tomorrow.