How to Go About Getting Marriage Certificate – Yours or Anybody Else's

A marriage certificate contains useful information about the proof of a legalized marriage. The information contained on the marriage certificate is useful to banking institutions, government agencies or individuals doing genealogical searches. You may place a request for getting marriage certificate from the city, town or state where the marriage took place. The different municipalities and states have varying rules regarding marriage certificate disclosure.

Also a marriage certificate is considered as public record, so it's available to anyone who has the correct required information. There are a few ways to getting marriage certificate: You can find the records at the courthouse of the county where the marriage took place, access state records or do a search online.

Getting marriage certificate is of utmost importance as the certified copies of marriage licenses are needed for several kinds of documentations and identification. You may also have a desire to search and find copies of marriage certificates in your ancestral background when researching the family tree. There are three sources in the state where a marriage took place for a person to getting marriage certificate copy of his own official wedding license certificate.

The first source is the county courthouse. If you can contact them in advance and tell them what information you are looking for, they may put the information aside for you to pick up while including a small fee for paperwork. You will need to know the full names of the husband and wife (including her maiden name), the date of the marriage and where in the county they were married for getting marriage certificate.

If the county courthouse does not have the records or if the records are only kept at the state level, then your next option for getting marriage certificate is to check the state archives. You can access the state archives by going to the state government page. There is usually a fee for this information, and again, you will need the full names and date of the marriage.

The last option for getting marriage certificate is to search online through VitalRec.com. Fill in the first and last name and the city and state. You will be directed to that state and the information you need. There is a fee to obtain the information.

In case you don't have all the information you need for getting marriage certificate, then you should consider looking at church records, perusing old newspapers for wedding and engagement announcements or even talking to people who knew the couple

Look for marriage licenses instead of the marriage certificate, to give you an idea of when they requested the license and therefore may have been married. With a little tact and patience, you should surely be able to find the information, because marriage certificates were usually completed immediately by the person who married the couple.