SEARCH MARRIAGE RECORDS 1984 - 2005 FULLY TRANSCRIBED AND FULLY NAME SEARCHABLE ON FAMILYRELATIVES.COM  

Civil Registration began in England and Wales on July 1st, 1837, the year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne and continues to the present day. The Civil Registration records are divided into three events, Births, Marriages and Deaths.

Prior to 1837 many of the Birth, Marriages and Deaths were recorded in the Parish Records. For further information please see the section on Parish Records.

The records can be divided into two categories. First the Registers which contain precise and detailed information kept by the General Register Office. The Registers are not open to the public and therefore no access is provided of any kind, nor are they available on www.familyrelatives.com. The Registers provide the information that is used for Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates.

The second category is the Indexes to the Registers which enable the public to search for family relatives and provide the information which enables a certificate to be ordered. The Indexes like the Registers, are organised firstly by year, then by quarter, with the surnames in alphabetical order.

Familyrelatives.com has the Civil Registration Indexes for England and Wales from 1837-2005 - these are the Births, Marriages and Deaths indexes which will allow you to locate the reference for the Certificate. We have made 600 million records available of which over 150 million are fully searchable on Surname, Mother's Maiden Name, District, Year and Quarter as well.

1837-1865 - Searchable on Surname range and Browseable with images of the GRO Index
1866-1920 - Fully Name Searchable on any criteria with images of the GRO Index
1921-1983 - Searchable on Surname range and Browseable with images of the GRO Index
1984-2005 - Fully Name Searchable on any criteria (no page images available)

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Marriage Match^TM - helpful search feature

Familyrelatives.com has introduced helpful search features allowing faster searching of the databases. The Marriage match^TMis a very useful feature which enables you to find the possible spouse in any marriage taking place between 1865-1920 and 1984-2005 without having to buy a certificate. After 1912 the entries do show the surname of the spouse, but not their first name. Marriage Match^TM performs a reverse search to find everyone married in the same District, on the same quarter and year and with the same page reference. This reduces the possible number of potential partners to 2 or 3 at the most.

Once you have found the marriage details of one person, clicking the icon next to their search result will find the potential partners listed on the same register page. There are usually only four names and one of those will be the wrong sex, leaving two possible partners. Providing either an extra piece of information to follow up or confirmation that you have located the correct couple.