Marriage Certificates

This website exists to help you obtain official replacement Marriage certificate as quickly and as easily as possible.

If you have begun or thinking of researching your family tree below is the information you will find on the marriage certificates.

The information below refers to the text of a United Kingdom (UK) Marriage Certificate from England and Wales. There may be some variance with other English and Welsh marriage certificates. Other British marriage certificates issued in Scotland and Northern Ireland will also vary.

Certified copy of an entry of Marriage Given at the General Register Office

Marriage Solemnized at (Register Office or Religious building such as a church or a private building) in the (Registration District) of (Registration County)

Column 1: When married

• Date of marriage

Column 2: Name and surname

• Names given by the bride and groom at the time of their marriage.

Column 3: Age

• The age given by the bride and groom at the time of marriage, it is only as accurate as they believe it to be at the time.
• The ages can be useful when calculating a year of birth. 'Full' may be recorded as the age and this indicates that the age was 21 or over.

Column 4: Condition

• Marital status at the time of marriage, e.g. bachelor/spinster, widow/widower or previous marriage dissolved.

Column 5: Rank or profession

• Bride and groom's occupation at the time of marriage, or last known occupation. Sometimes the bride has no occupation stated.

Column 6: Residence at the time of marriage

1. Until 1995, for a marriage to take place in a register office, one of the couple had to live within that registration district. Couples marrying in a parish church needed to live in the parish in which they were marrying

Column 7: Father's name and surname

• This information assists when tracing birth entries of the bride/groom
• If a line is drawn through this column it indicates that this information was not given at the time of the marriage

Column 8: Rank or profession of father

• This information assists when tracing birth entries of the bride/groom
• If a line is drawn through this column it indicates that this information was not supplied at the time of the marriage

This certificate is issued in pursuance of Section 65 of The Marriage Act 1949. Sub-Section 3 of that section provides that "any certified copy of an entry purporting to be sealed or stamped with the seal of the General Register Office shall be received as evidence of the marriage to which it relates, without any further or other proof of the entry, and no certified copy purporting to have been given in the said Office shall be of any force or effect unless it is sealed or stamped as aforesaid."