Travel to England before a possible move in the future

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There's no hard-and-fast rule about how long you need to stay away before you can re=enter, but as soon as the proportion of your time spent in the country begins to approach 50%, you can expect a good deal more scrutiny. Therefore, using visitor visas, your best case scenario will be to alternate periods of six months in and six months out. The likelihood of being able to do this for more than a couple of visits is pretty small, however, and you may even have trouble entering for your first visit.

Once you are married, however, you may be eligible to get a spouse visa allowing you to move to the UK. These are costly and difficult to qualify for. If your future spouse is a citizen of another EU country (not the UK), then you can get an EEA family permit, which is considerably easier.

That's off-topic for this site, however, and you should ask about it on Expatriates if you are interested in learning more. When you do that, mention your soulmate's citizenship. The rest of this answer discusses your plan to go to the UK as soon as your passport arrives.

If you're traveling to the UK to get married, or even to see your fiancee, you will be suspected of intending to immigrate, which is not allowed when you enter with your visa-free six-month leave to enter. There's therefore a risk that you will be turned away at the border. If you plan to get married on any given trip, in fact, you need a visa for that trip.

You are allowed simply to visit your future spouse on a visitor visa, but you will have a hard time proving, as you must, that you intend to leave the country within six months. If you arrive with a one-way ticket, for example, you'll need to show that you have ample funds to support yourself without working, and that you'll still have enough money at the end of six months to buy a one-way ticket back home.

As evidence that you intend to return to the US, the officials in the UK will want to see evidence of your job and home in the US. It sounds like you plan to abandon these, so that will definitely not work in your favor.

Fortunately for you, unlike most of Europe, visa-exempt nationals such as you can apply for a visa before visiting the UK. This allows you to have your plans evaluated before you travel, rather than after you arrive at the border. If you're rejected, the consequences are far less burdensome, since you will not essentially have thrown away a plane ticket.

A word of advice: Read up on UK visas. Especially, have a look at

Then make a long-term plan that will allow you to realize your dreams with your soulmate. An impetuous journey to the UK border is likely to lead to disappointment for both of you.

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