From: acornish@imm.cnrs.fr   
      
   On 2021-02-14 07:18:43 +0000, cecilia said:   
      
   > On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:54:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"   
   >  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Just looking at my maternal grandparents' wedding certificate (William   
   >> Weightman to Mary Haley, 1927-10-1, Bedlington, Northumberland [St.   
   >> Cuthberts]).   
   >>   
   >> It's the usual "I, ... do hereby certify that this is a true copy of the   
   >> Entry No ... in the Register Book of Marriages of the said Church.",   
   >> although it _is_ dated the same day, i. e. it isn't a copy made later.   
   >>   
   >> I notice the signatures are different writing to both that elsewhere on   
   >> the copy and to each other, so it looks likely Grandma and Granddad (and   
   >> the Witnesses - they're different too) signed it.   
   >>   
   >> I just wondered if it was common for the couple to sign both the   
   >> register and at least one of the copies. (I'm guessing it was the copy   
   >> for their own use, as I have it - the actual piece of paper I mean -   
   >> from among Grandma's papers.)   
   >   
   > I'm not all that surprised that it may happen if the  "copies" are   
   > ready to hand  and otherwise completed - and there's no pressure of   
   > time for any of the parties,   
   >   
   > It did not happen at my wedding, nor at either wedding of someone I   
   > asked (who married in Spain and then again in England, because the   
   > English groom wanted paper-work in his own language and the cost of a   
   > cicil wedding was comparable with that of a certified translation).   
      
   As I've been discovering to my cost, certified translations can add up.   
   I haven't made the calculation, but I think we must have spent at least   
   500€ in the past couple of years on getting certified French versions   
   of English and Spanish originals. The first language on my mother's   
   birth certificate is in Irish, but fortunately it is in English as   
   well, and even if we had managed to find an official translator from   
   Irish in Marseilles it would have cost a fortune. (When my mother was   
   born, in 1910, I expect that official documents were in English only,   
   but I don't have the original birth certificate, only one issue   
   recently by the Irish authorities.)   
      
   Drifting a little, my father was born in Nova Scotia in 1908, and they   
   apparently didn't have birth certificates as such at that time and   
   place, so the best I could get was a copy of the relevant page in the   
   official records. The record for my father managed to pack five errors   
   into a few lines. It was a useful warning for genealogy that one can't   
   assume that official records are accurate. Modern records in Nova   
   Scotia are in French as well as English, and if that had been the case   
   in 1908 I could have saved 100€.   
      
      
   --   
   Athel -- British, living in France for 34 years   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)