If you have doubts about the options available in Thailand, I would suggest looking in to life insurance out of your home country. I don't want to assume, but if you are American, and your wife is your wife on paper (not a village marriage, but with a certificate from the amphur), you can make arrangements to make her a payee. You could probably make arrangements for a foreign payee without all of that, but you have to check with the insurance company.

I have 4 credit cards with 0% (from the US)… worth looking around to see if there is a card out there that may be better.

If you don’t currently have a credit card with 0% conversion fees on international purchases, apply for one. Not sure how it works in Germany, but a number of credit cards in many countries will have points or rewards that will make the first year potentially profitable… worth looking in to.

It's about to be summer... Bali would be better. :)

You could also spend a little extra time wandering around the region. A couple of weeks in Bali or Kuala Lumpur is a great way to kill some time while waiting for approval.

Not quite so easy... The appointments at the embassy were months out when we tried to do everything in Thailand, and no agent or law firm we contacted wanted to deal with it. The amphur made it sound like it was no problem, but we kept running in to obstacles. Way easier to just pay someone to do it when we went back to the states. They knew exactly what was needed, had all of the forms ready to go, and estimated that I would have it back before I would be able to get an appointment at the embassy in Bangkok.

I got married in the US. In order for my wife to use our marriage license with the local amphur, the process is to get a certified copy of the license from the county we got married in. Then have it certified by the state we got married in. Then have it certified by the US State Department. Then send it to the Thai Embassy in Washington DC to be certified for use in Thailand.

That is a total of about 10 weeks and 200 ish USD in fees and FedEx costs sending the documents back and forth with prepaid addressed envelopes (can not do most of this in person, even in you happen to be in Washington DC). We paid an agency in the US to handle it since we live in Thailand. There is supposedly a process for doing this in Thailand, but it seemed more complicated than just paying an agency to deal with it...

Probably easier to think about it like this: You can not get a UK marriage license unless you got married in the UK. You can register your marriage abroad if you take the required documents to the local office that handles these kinds of things.

Thai marriage licenses are recognized by most governments. I don’t know the specifics, but once you register the marriage, you can start looking in to what is required to add her to your benefits. I think the UK is similar to the US (where I’m from) and there is a waiting period and a need to get some kind of tax id number or local equivalent. Should be pretty straightforward googling the terms “register marriage abroad + your local office”

Reapply. Include a letter (top sheet) about you and your circumstances and your ties to Thailand. Include the reason for your trip, and that your life is here, but you’d like for her to join you on your work trip so that she can meet family. Keep it short, and include your visa type and how long you have been here. Make sure she makes them read it (can’t stress enough, short and simple), and that everything you say is factual and verifiable. This did the trick on my wife’s second attempt. They asked her to come back with my passport, and she got a 10 year visa.

She was unemployed, had less than 10k USD in the bank, was a “girlfriend” of a U.S. citizen, and owned a 500k THB condo. Not exactly ticking all the boxes that everyone is talking about, but the interviewer felt that she would return to Thailand… good instinct, because we’ve been four times and always come back. Good luck.