BritsKate
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I could be waaaay off here (can't research this right at this moment; will try later if I get the time), BUT this would explain something I've been puzzling over. It seemed to me at some point going through the photos online, that in some of the wedding photos EB looked markedly thinner than in others, and quite altogether different. I had been wondering if perhaps they'd had a second wedding ceremony 'stateside'? This would certainly fit in with EB's narcissistic-seeming tendencies, and I can just imagine her feeding everyone some kind of baloney about how the ceremony here would be 'so her relatives could see them get married, too'. (Read: 'Ooooh, another chance to be in the spotlight and get lots of free stuff for me, ME MEEE!!!' Whoops--sorry, got carried away--I'm feeling bitter...)
Sorry, all just my thinking 'out loud', but if it would have helped with immigration/residential issues to have another wedding here, I could see it happening.
Anyone's thoughts?
I'll give it a go. US would have recognised the marriage first off so there would be no necessity, per se, of a stateside ceremony. That said some foreign nationals do indeed (as mentioned above) seek entry into the US as a visitor, marry their impending spouse, and then seek to apply for residency. (Fiancee visas are both expensive and very short term.) Tourist visas are much cheaper and some countries use the VWP so he and Zahra wouldn't have needed a visa unless they were planning to stay longer than 90 days.
USCIS frowns very, very heavily upon tourism marriage though and has denied GCs altogether for trying to 'play' the system.
http://www.visabureau.com/america/b2-tourist-visa.aspx
According to this a tourist visa would last 6 months. Not sure how that matches up to the date of the passport pics but its possible (and has been suggested by another poster) they had intentions of applying legally for residency towards the end of that visa.