Is anyone here a Registrar for Weddings?

[Jungfraujoch]

I have a question regarding a bride’s father’s name on the marriage certificate. Thanks.

I’m not a registrar but I do the paper for church weddings so might be able to help (vicars act as registrars)

Yes you may be able to - thank you! My parents were married in 1961. Mum was adopted and always said she didn’t know who her father was. last year for their 60th we needed to get a copy of the certificate to request a card from the Queen. To our surprise there was a name for her father! My query is would that have been information she gave? Or maybe this man’s name was put on there so it wasn’t blank? The man is her Uncle and due to other info that’s come to light I’m
thinking he could well be her Dad!

Ooh, intriguing.

So, before the rules changed last year, the deal was that you had to put details of the father down unless there was a compelling reason not to. This would be informative provided by the bride and groom themselves, but if she was adopted I think she could have put her adoptive dad down instead (you certainly could now).

I suppose the question I would have is was it judged to be better to have ‘somebody’ in the dad space than to have people question whether her uncle was her dad?

You could try getting in touch with the relevant council archive department- they might have more of a feel for what the social mores of the time would have required, and I generally find are up for a chat!

Hi. I'm a Registrar. The details in the box with the name of her father on your mum's marriage certificate would have been provided by your mum. The name wouldn’t have been evidenced but would have been recorded from the information she gave the Registrar at the time of her marriage. It could be an adopted father but shouldn’t be an uncle or other person not her father, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have been advised to add a name of someone other than her father.

Thank you. She didn’t have an adoptive father, her adoptive Mum’s husband died just before she was born. The ‘Uncle’ in question was actually her adoptive mother’s BIL! And she had a very close relationship with him growing up. Mum has always said that her adoptive Mum would never talk about it (as was the norm back then), so it’s odd that his name is there - wouldn’t it have been breaking the law to just put in his name if not her father?

Well, it could be perjury if a deliberate untruth was told, but families can be so complex that a person may have genuinely been telling what they thought was correct and true, even if it wasn't the actual fact.