• couple sign copies?

    From J. P. Gilliver (John)@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 10 20:54:37 2021
    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.)
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'. Professor Edzart Ernst, prudential magazine, AUTUMN 2006, p. 13.

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  • From cecilia@21:1/5 to G6JPG@255soft.uk on Sun Feb 14 07:18:43 2021
    On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:54:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
    <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

    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).

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  • From Athel Cornish-Bowden@21:1/5 to cecilia on Mon Feb 15 09:16:14 2021
    On 2021-02-14 07:18:43 +0000, cecilia said:

    On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:54:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

    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€.


    --
    Athel -- British, living in France for 34 years

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