1899 marriage cert - copy or original?

[Guy Martin]

Hope all you clever people out there can end my confusion.
I have the marriage certificate of my great grandparents issued in 1899. It has a Victorian one penny stamp in the lower right hand corner and perforations down the left hand side indicating it has been torn from a pad of certificates. The entries are handwritten in black ink. It is not a printed copy. What I want to know is whether this is the original certificate which was given to the my great grandparents on the day of their marriage?
All the entries are in the same hand, so the names of the couple and witnesses shown are not their signatures. Its a long time ago since I married! I cannot remember whether we signed a register in the church and then the vicar transferred the information onto the certificate before giving it to us, or whether we signed the atual certificate (we lost our original some years ago) on the day. I'm confused because my niece married three years ago and says her marriage cert has her's and her spouse's actual signatures on it. Could my 1898 certicate be the original one?

Thanks in anticipation
GM

[Kerrywood]

Where exactly did the marriage take place?

[Peter Goodey]

Isn't there a form of words on the certificate indicating its origin?

[stepives]

I have the same thing on my Grandmothers 1874 birth cert. And it was a copy for Pension purposes.

The one I have is a handwritten copy, issued in 1940.

The stamp, I assume, is the stamp duty for the cert.


Steve.

[Guy Martin]

Thank you so far for your replies.
At the bottom of the certificate it says "The above is a true copy of the Marriage Register of the Church of St Catherine aforesaid, the said Register being in my custody. Extracted this 19 day of August in the Year of Our Lord one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, By me (signature of the Vicar who officiated). The marriage took place on the same date. Does that mean that it was the certificate given to them before they left the church after the ceremony, or would there have been another certificate which they actually signed. I'm still not sure whether a marriage certificate could have the signatures of the married couple or whether that never happened in 1899, because it was only the Marriage Register that a couple would sign.

[arthurk]

A marriage certificate is "a true copy of the Marriage Register", and I've a feeling that the minister is supposed to fill it all out in his own writing. However, I believe some clergy feel it's OK for the couple and their witnesses to sign the certificate as well as the register, to give them a more personalised memento of the occasion - but strictly speaking this is a bit irregular.

Since this certificate was issued on the same day that the marriage took place, I think it's very likely to have been given to the couple at the ceremony, though in the absence of anyone who was actually there, you can't be 100% sure. (For example, there might have been a cousin who was researching the family who went up to the minister after the service and asked for a duplicate certificate for his records )

Arthur

[Guy Etchells]

Have you made a typo in the date?
The date you give in your posting is 1999 and you also mention the year of marriage as 1899.

"...Extracted this 19 day of August in the Year of Our Lord one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, By me (signature of the Vicar who officiated)...."

Which is the true date on the certificate?
Cheers
Guy

[Guy Martin]

Thank you to everyone who has contributed. I think I can now conclude the following having read the replies.

The declaration at the bottom of the marriage certificate stating that it is a true copy of the Marriage Register is dated the same as the date of the marriage. It was signed by the same C of E vicar who conducted the ceremony. This indicates that it was given to my great grandparents on the day of their wedding in 1899 and is therefore almost certainly the original. It seems that some vicars allow the marriage partners to actually sign their marriage certificates but this is unusual and irregular. Normally couples signed only the Marriage Register and the marriage certificate is a copy of that register. Apologies for the typo in my post where at one point I said 1999.

Thanks to all once again.