23/10/2025
Struggling to find a Scottish marriage record?
Indexes to marriages registered from 1855 to the present day are available to search on Scotland's People. These are civil registration marriages and if the marriage was registered more than 75 years ago we can view the image online. These records are packed with information about the bride and groom and are a fundamental building block of family history research.
Have you ever been in a situation where you can’t find the entry you are looking for? You may even have the date but you just can’t find the entry.
Let’s explore some reasons why that may be.
1️⃣ The couple were living together without being married. This is more common than we might expect and there are a number of reasons, one reason is that one or both parties of the couple were already married to someone else. Bigamy was a crime that could land you in prison. Some couples simply pretended to be married and they may have even given a fictitious date of marriage on the birth certificate of their child. Look for an earlier marriage and see if you can unravel the truth.
2️⃣ The date of the marriage is wrong. We may have found a date of marriage from the birth certificate of a couple's child. Although registrars preferred couples to bring their marriage certificate with them this date was often given from memory.
3️⃣ Spelling issues. This is always one of the top reasons we can’t find a record. Try using wildcards to broaden your search. If one of the surnames is often spelt in creative ways just leave it out. Search by one partner's forename and surname and just use the other partner's forename. ScotlandsPeople allows you to search on a variety of terms so play around and see if you can find the entry.
4️⃣ Married somewhere unexpected. Once people were travelling around the country by train it wasn’t unusual for people to marry in Glasgow or Edinburgh even if they weren't from there. Start close to home but be prepared to broaden your search.
5️⃣ They married irregularly and did not register it. A form of marriage in Scotland was ‘marriage by declaration’. The couple could declare before witnesses that they were married and that was it; they were married. From 1855 they could take a proof of marriage to the Sheriff, obtain a warrant and take this to the registrar: only then would their marriage be recorded in the Civil registration marriages we find on ScotlandsPeople. How good were your ancestors at paperwork? Did they understand the process?
Let’s take a look at two examples of this, one from the 19th century and one from the 20th century.
James Slavin and Ann Cowan were married in September 1904. Like many people in this period, they went to a solicitor, Mr. Rogers, to be married. Solicitors regularly advertised their services in the newspaper.
In a letter dated 14 September 1913 (9 years later) Mr Slavin explains that he was not aware he had to go to the registrar with the Sheriff’s warrant. He was under the impression that the solicitor had handled everything.
This case came to light because there was an investigation into the non-registration of irregular marriages in Scotland. The year 1908 was examined, and it was found that at least 81 irregular marriages that had taken place in Glasgow had not been registered. The marriage schedules were still at the solicitors' offices.
An official noted, “Assuming the year 1908 anything like represents what has been going on in Glasgow for some years back, the state of matters amounts to a scandal.”
During the course of this investigation, it was found that solicitors had ‘married’ couples but not told them (or not clearly told them) the process to have the marriage registered. This was a problem because, although the couples were married, there were many reasons why they might later need to prove that the marriage took place. The divorce of Helen Thomson or Byers from her husband Thomas Richardson Byres became very complicated when it was discovered that the marriage had not been registered!
What was happening was that solicitors would advertise in the newspaper (as you can see in the image) and made it sound really quick and straightforward. Many couples were just like the Slavins; they didn’t know the next step, and their marriage was not registered. This means that today, we may not be able to find it in the civil registration records even though the couple were married.
A lot of the detail from the Slavin case was discovered in official records created by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) and now held by the National Records of Scotland, reference GRO5/88.
Let’s look at a second case study from an earlier period. Another couple who were married by declaration but did not get either the Sheriff’s Warrant and/or go to the registrar’s office were John Wylie and Mary Lindsay. We learn about them in the Cannonbie Kirk Session records (CH2/1582/1/5). This couple appeared before the Kirk Session, admitted what they had done and were rebuked. Within the Kirk Session records, we see that they were married at Gretna Green on 4 August 1863.
What do we learn from these examples? Use tips 1-4 first and try to find the marriage. If you still can’t find it try the Kirk Session records. Also, search the newspaper, as some irregular marriages were announced in the newspaper but not registered. If you have exhausted all these options, it may be that the couple were married where and when they stated, but didn’t have the marriage registered.
Want to keep learning? There will be links to newspaper articles, a ScotlandsPeople guide and more in our first comment below this post.
