Hello,
I am planning to ask my girlfriend in marriage during our next travel.. but the question after is paperwork. For married Canadian using this site, where did you marry ? Canada, Ukraine ? Ukraine would be my first choice because of step family. I would have some suggestions to tell her if she says yes...
I married my wife in Canada. I have to say that I lucked out: I was scolded and told by the Canadian consular officials that I should sponsor my girlfriend first. You can try to get her a visa to visit Canada, but there is a chance that she may be refused a visa. This may cause her some problems later on.
If she does get a visa and you do marry in Canada, you can apply to sponsor her in Canada and she can do what is called an "inland application" whereby she can wait inside the country for her application for permanent residency to be processed. However, she won't be able to leave the country and she won't be able to get a Social Insurance Number and work until she gets her PR card.
However, you will have to prove that you have a legitimate relationship so keep all your paperwork: tickets, receipts from restaurants where you had dates, etc.... It takes a bit longer to process the application for permanent residence inside Canada: we were lucky in that it took seven months (my wife landed earlier this month) and it will take anywhere from a few weeks to two months for her to get her permanent residence card.
There is another problem: if you apply inside the country, you cannot appeal if her application for permanent residence is refused. If this were to happen, your only option would be for her to return to Ukraine and then apply for her PR from Ukraine.
To make a long story short, there are a lot of risks in trying to to bring your girlfriend to Canada (visa may be refused, no right of appeal for the application for PR, etc....). However, we tried and we were very lucky and everything worked out for us. It is good to keep the risks in mind.
The main risk you will face is that CIC may question the legitimacy of the marriage if you did not spend a lot of face-to-face time with her before getting married. In my case, I spent spent several months with my wife before we came to Canada and when we applied for her PR, we had been together for over a year.
