can you trust the information on a marriage certificate

[VivienR]

I ordered the marriage certificate just to confirm what I thought I knew but apparently I might be wrong. ( doesn't happen very often but yes sometimes)

I know not to trust ages, names and places of birth on censuses, and ages on marriage certificates.
How often do you think that the groom's father would  not be correct?  In this case the groom's father listed had the same first name as the groom - could it have been an error done by whoever filled out the certificate - repeating the same name? Or possibly the groom did not want to own up to his father (dad ended up in the poor house)

Thanks for any light you can shed on this puzzle.

Vivien

[stanmapstone]

Do you know what the father's first name was? If you know it was different to the grooms then it is quite possible that either the minister for a church wedding, or the registrar for a Register Office wedding, made a mistake when filling out the certificate.

Stan

[silvery]

Is it a photocopy of the original?   Or one written/copied out by hand in the office as they do in some local register offices?

[roopat]

I have a copy of a marriage cert, bride's father - deceased (true), his occupation - paper merchant (untrue, he was an auction porter). This myth that she came from a wealthy family and married beneath her lasted 4 generations till I started researching..... . It is obvious from censuses and other evidence that she was VERY economical with the truth 

Pat

[Alexander.]

I have an ancestor called Henry whose father was definitely Andrew, yet on Henry's marriage cert (and parish marriage register) his father is recorded as Henry also. I think this must just be a clerical error.

On the other hand, do not be too quick to jump to that conclusion. Early in my research I thought, with good reason, that the father of one of my ancestors was Thomas. When I got her marriage cert it turns out her father was James, and I'd been tracing the wrong line for ages.

Alexander

[maryalex]

A [coloured] photocopy marriage certificate from the GRO showed my great-great-grandfather's first name as Peter when it should have been Thomas.  The typed certificate I got from the Warrington Registrar a few years later showed Thomas.  

[mofid42]

I have a couple of certificates with name errors which I believe to be clerical errors.
A birth cert where the fathers middle name was incorrect. It should have been James but put as John, the same as his child.
And a marriage cert where the fathers first and one of his middle names were totally different to what they where in reality.

And that's to say nothing about all those that have a made up fathers name!

[KGarrad]

My mother misplaced her birth certificate, and applied for a copy, so she could get a passport.

Nothing wrong there, except it came back as:

Forenames: Joyce Cicely
Sex:  Boy!!!

So errors, happen all the time!

[MagicMirror]

I have one GRO certificate where the bride's and groom's addresses have been transposed.  They married within 3 months of a census so I'm reasonably sure this is what happened.