How to Find Marriage Records

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posted on 14 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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Marriage records in the Unites States fall under the category of Vital Records, along with birth, death, and divorce records. The process of finding marriage records will vary depending on the state where the marriage occurred. There are various circumstances under which you might need to find marriage records. People may seek a copy of their own marriage record because of lost documents; another reason might be for completing genealogy records for your family.

Steps

Finding Your Own Marriage Records

Find out where the state in which you were married keeps vital records. Different states have different ways of keeping vital records, including marriage records. In Pennsylvania, you’ll find marriage records at the Marriage License Clerks division of the county courthouse in the county where you were married. In Florida, you can find marriage records through the Department of Health’s Bureau of Vital Statistics. You can search online for the state’s name and “marriage records” or “vital records.” The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has information on how to find vital records in each state. This part of their website can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/w2w.htm. Always be sure to look on official websites that contain “.gov” in the web address for the correct information. There are other sites that claim to find marriage records for free or for a fee; these may not be reliable sources.

Have your identification information ready. You will most likely need your social security number and a state- or federal- issued ID (driver’s license or passport) in order to get a copy of your marriage license. Have this information ready to save time in the process.

Give all information required and pay the fee. In addition to personal identification information, most states do charge a fee for obtaining duplicate copies of your marriage license. Fees for copies of your marriage records range typically range from $5 to $34, depending on the state where the marriage occurred. Many states use VitalChek.com as a way to order copies of your own vital records. If you are redirected to this location during your search online, this is a valid and trusted source to use.

Finding Ancestors’ Marriage Records

Locate the state in which your ancestors were married. If you’re not sure, there are some fairly reliable online sources that can point you in the right direction, such as ancestry.com. But if you use sites like this, you’ll still want to verify the facts using an official government site and look for census information, either through the state or with a federal census genealogy search at http://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/.

Visit the state’s location of vital records archives. Know that not all archives of vital records are available online. You may have to go to the actual location in which the state keeps vital records. Whether you have to do this will depend on the state and how far back in time the marriage you are searching for occurred.

Supply your own identification information. In order to look at more recent census and other vital records from the past 72 years, you may need to fill out a legal form, BC-600, that verifies you are either the person getting the record or his descendant. This formality is to protect the privacy of the public and only allows actual descendants or spouses to see address information on people who are either still living or are recently deceased. If you fill out form BC-600, you’ll need to mail it in to U.S. Census Bureau, P.O. Box 1545, Jeffersonville, IN 47131, along with a money order or check for $65.00 payable to "Commerce–Census."