Recording a Marriage Event

Linda Tippets

Suggestion...

When recording a marriage event date and place on a person's page, the options are 1) Annulment, 2) Common Law Marriage, 3) Divorce, 4) Lived Together and 5) Marriage. Would it be possible to add 6) License?

Thank you!

Julia Szent-Györgyi

This would only work if the choice of displayed event could be selected. It currently shows the event with the earliest date, which means that if the license or announcements are entered, it shows the date for that as if it were the marriage.

Paul W

It often takes some research (if there is no image attached) to confirm whether the record does relate to a licence, banns or the actual marriage ceremony.

There really needs to be a fundamental change in how the Couple Relationship section functions before this, or any other suggestion, can be implemented. Meanwhile, the details can be added as a Custom Event to the profiles involved.

Adrian Bruce1

When recording a marriage event date and place on a person's page, the options are 1) Annulment, 2) Common Law Marriage, 3) Divorce, 4) Lived Together and 5) Marriage.

Strictly these 5 things aren't Events, they refer to the type of marital relationship. After all, in many jurisdictions, the whole point of a Common Law Marriage is that there isn't an event!

Annulment is a type because it means it was thought that there was a marriage but actually, there never was.

Common Law Marriage is a type because it means (in many jurisdictions), there isn't a formal marriage event

Divorce is a type because it means there was a formal marriage, but it's been broken / cancelled / whatever.

Lived Together is similar to Common Law but the relationship is even less formal. If that makes sense.

Marriage is a type because it says that there was a formal event.

So what do those types have to do with the request? License and Banns are events that possibly apply to one or more types of marriage - I reckon at least to Marriage, Divorce and Annulment.

We need the ability to record those events against those different types. So yes to License and Banns and ? - just not as a different type of marriage but as an event against several types.