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Information recorded on marriage certificates
The following information indicates what you should expect to see in each column of the marriage certificate and provides an explanation as to why some of the information is recorded in the format that it is. Download the marriage certificate help sheet (pdf, 213k), a specimen marriage certificate to be used in conjunction with the text below.
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, is only as accurate as they believe it to be
- 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
- 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
