After spending over a month getting background checks and medical exams and collecting other random bits of information about our lives and relationship, we were concerned that our visas might not be approved in time for our expected departure. To make matters worse, we had to send in our passports to complete our application, and needed them for our 4th of July trip to Canada (where we have spent four out of the last five July 4th weekends - soooo patriotic).
New Zealand immigration has visa offices in Washington DC and Los Angeles. We sent our applications to the DC office. We sent our passports to complete our application less than a month before we were due to move, and crossed our fingers that we would get our visas in time. All our worry was for naught - our visas were approved only five business days after our applications were complete - and we didn't even ask for expedited processing! New Zealand and the US have an agreement in place under which our application fee was waived due to the type of visa we have, so we only had to pay $33 each as a processing/shipping fee.
A day or two later we received our passports (but nothing else - so don't send originals!),which had our visas in them. The visa is a large sticker that takes up an entire page of your passport, specifying the type of visa and important rules/dates/etc. Once we had those, we got permission from work to buy plane tickets (they're paying), and so booked two seats for Wednesday, August 7th - we're flying through LAX and then straight onto Auckland (a 13 hour flight). We are going to give Air New Zealand's Skycouch seats a try - that way we'll know whether to recommend it to you all when you come visit!
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