Intent of Marriage
Comments
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It sounds like you are talking about an engagement involving a couple. There are several elements missing in the couple relationship area and hopefully, one day it will be reworked to include many elements of a couple relationship, including, but not limited to significant wedding anniversaries -- such as the fiftieth wedding anniversary.
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It sounds like you are talking about an engagement involving a couple. There are several elements missing in the couple relationship area and hopefully, one day it will be reworked to include many elements of a couple relationship, including, but not limited to significant wedding anniversaries -- such as the fiftieth wedding anniversary.
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I whole heartedly agree!!! It is very common in my ancestry which is of the Great Migration into New England along the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border from 1920 to 1940 but carried on for nearly a century for me. Intentions were required to be published in public places for at least a week (in my family) before the marriage and in some cases several months in my family. FT does not even recognize this event in Other Events nor in the more important Marriage Event dropdown list. This very common fact needs to be addressed preferably in the Marriage Event dropdown list. I have seen in at least one place where the Banns/Intentions be announced and the system picking it up as the marriage and then the marriage not take place but the couple is sealed and that is just wrong. Please visit this again.
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For now, how I would handle this is enter the intention as a marriage, with a note on the marriage. There is a Note field below where you enter the marriage date and place. Also make a profile Note (on phone app use the big "+" on the Details frame; on website use the Collaboration menu) that there is a marriage intention without corresponding marriage.
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If there is one major weakness within Family Tree it is with how couple relationships are dealt with. There have been some minor enhancements to the Couple Relationship area, but its content and functionality have been left fairly well unchanged, in spite of requests from users.
For many years FamilySearch chose (and perhaps still does) to record associated events (banns, licences, etc.) as though they represented the marriage event itself. Another problem has been the ability to carry over marriage event details during the source attachment process, even when an event had already been added: this cannot be done with christenings, burials, etc., so why for marriages? In fact, this has the negative effect of superseding the detail for the marriage ceremony with the (earlier dated) banns or licence data - to the extent of replacing the perfectly good information marriage ceremony (displayed on the Person pages) with the marriage-related detail.
Perhaps the problems largely lie with the design of Family Tree being one that gives priority to the records of individuals. Whatever the reason, couple relationship / marriage detail remains largely concealed from view: Relationship Events probably being the only section in Family Tree where one still has to click on "Edit" to see the (hidden) detail.
Over the years, there have been many good suggestions (placed on the old GetSat forum, etc.) for improvements in presenting / recording couple relationship information, but this is the one area where developers appear to be reluctant to have any serious involvement.
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When a new instance of marriage data is added to a couple the old instance is not overwritten. You only see the most recent instance on the couple's profile pages, but if you edit the marriage data you will see all the instances.
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My experience is that the most recently added marriage event will only go automatically to the person page(s) if the date is earlier than the one that was displayed up to that point. Hence, I have not found this necessarily to be the last event to be added - usually by it being carried across in the source linker process.
When I find the details of, say, the marriage licence have replaced the marriage ceremony details (because it will obviously have an earlier date) I delete it from the Couple Relationship area (with a reason statement), but can then add it as a Custom Event, under Other Information.
Users generally want as much detail as possible carried across when adding a source, but this is one area where I find this not to be a good idea: preferring to review / examine the nature of the event (does it really relate to the actual marrige event?) and making any necessary change manually.
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I am honestly not trying to "prove you wrong" with your statement that, "You only see the most recent instance on the couple's profile pages", but (assuming you did mean that only the last details added will be displayed) I decided to try this out. I added a source to Barbars Stanley, but - as shown below - this did not replace the existing date / detail on the person page, due to the date in the source being later than the one being displayed. After I wrote my earlier comments, I had doubts about the accuracy of my statement, so needed to confirm the actual way this works for my own peace of mind!
I just added a source (to be immediately deleted, as it did not actually relate to this couple) and found the 29 Sep 1827 date on the source stays off the person pages, as it falls later than the previous 19 May 1827 input:
(See https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/MQQN-VN7 and click on pencil icon by marriage details)
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I appreciate that we are having a civil, thoughtful conversation, and take no offense. FT is complex, and so is the information we are working with. In some places the marriage intentions are all that survive, the marriage records themselves having been lost. For this reason I enter intentions in the couple relationship. A relationship can have many events. If the details matter, a later researcher should examine all sources.
I agree it would be nice to be able to label a marriage event "Intention", although perhaps the more general "Public notice" would be more appropriate. That would cover banns and other notices in advance of a wedding, as well as newspaper announcements published after a wedding.
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