couple sign copies?

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Just looking at my maternal grandparents' wedding certificate (William
Weightman to Mary Haley, 1927-10-1, Bedlington, Northumberland [St.
Cuthberts]).

It's the usual "I, ... do hereby certify that this is a true copy of the
Entry No ... in the Register Book of Marriages of the said Church.",
although it _is_ dated the same day, i. e. it isn't a copy made later.

I notice the signatures are different writing to both that elsewhere on
the copy and to each other, so it looks likely Grandma and Granddad (and
the Witnesses - they're different too) signed it.

I just wondered if it was common for the couple to sign both the
register and at least one of the copies. (I'm guessing it was the copy
for their own use, as I have it - the actual piece of paper I mean -
from among Grandma's papers.)

[cecilia]

On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:54:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
Just looking at my maternal grandparents' wedding certificate (William
Weightman to Mary Haley, 1927-10-1, Bedlington, Northumberland [St.
Cuthberts]).
It's the usual "I, ... do hereby certify that this is a true copy of the
Entry No ... in the Register Book of Marriages of the said Church.",
although it _is_ dated the same day, i. e. it isn't a copy made later.
I notice the signatures are different writing to both that elsewhere on
the copy and to each other, so it looks likely Grandma and Granddad (and
the Witnesses - they're different too) signed it.
I just wondered if it was common for the couple to sign both the
register and at least one of the copies. (I'm guessing it was the copy
for their own use, as I have it - the actual piece of paper I mean -
from among Grandma's papers.)

I'm not all that surprised that it may happen if the "copies" are
ready to hand and otherwise completed - and there's no pressure of
time for any of the parties,

It did not happen at my wedding, nor at either wedding of someone I
asked (who married in Spain and then again in England, because the
English groom wanted paper-work in his own language and the cost of a
cicil wedding was comparable with that of a certified translation).

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Post by cecilia
On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:54:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
Just looking at my maternal grandparents' wedding certificate (William
Weightman to Mary Haley, 1927-10-1, Bedlington, Northumberland [St.
Cuthberts]).
It's the usual "I, ... do hereby certify that this is a true copy of the
Entry No ... in the Register Book of Marriages of the said Church.",
although it _is_ dated the same day, i. e. it isn't a copy made later.
I notice the signatures are different writing to both that elsewhere on
the copy and to each other, so it looks likely Grandma and Granddad (and
the Witnesses - they're different too) signed it.
I just wondered if it was common for the couple to sign both the
register and at least one of the copies. (I'm guessing it was the copy
for their own use, as I have it - the actual piece of paper I mean -
from among Grandma's papers.)

I'm not all that surprised that it may happen if the "copies" are
ready to hand and otherwise completed - and there's no pressure of
time for any of the parties,
It did not happen at my wedding, nor at either wedding of someone I
asked (who married in Spain and then again in England, because the
English groom wanted paper-work in his own language and the cost of a
cicil wedding was comparable with that of a certified translation).

As I've been discovering to my cost, certified translations can add up.
I haven't made the calculation, but I think we must have spent at least
500€ in the past couple of years on getting certified French versions
of English and Spanish originals. The first language on my mother's
birth certificate is in Irish, but fortunately it is in English as
well, and even if we had managed to find an official translator from
Irish in Marseilles it would have cost a fortune. (When my mother was
born, in 1910, I expect that official documents were in English only,
but I don't have the original birth certificate, only one issue
recently by the Irish authorities.)

Drifting a little, my father was born in Nova Scotia in 1908, and they
apparently didn't have birth certificates as such at that time and
place, so the best I could get was a copy of the relevant page in the
official records. The record for my father managed to pack five errors
into a few lines. It was a useful warning for genealogy that one can't
assume that official records are accurate. Modern records in Nova
Scotia are in French as well as English, and if that had been the case
in 1908 I could have saved 100€.