Coombs:
" I wonder how many 1800-1837 marriages that took place in England and Wales that are still as yet unindexed and/or online. Of course if the couple never married then there will be no record, saying that I have often found a banns or license issued, but no known subsequent marriage yet, and subsequent records show the couple stayed together."
My paternal gt grandparents married in a local church then walked across the road to their new home. However, the church of St. Peters, where they married was bombed during WWII, which means the church registers were destroyed too.
Unfortunately these islands are quite damp and many parish records kept in church cellars tended to disintigrate due to the damp.
Some areas of the UK kept to their old customs of "hand fasting" in place of a church marriage, which meant they didn't have to pay marriage licence taxes to the government. I have one church record where my ancestors apologised to the local church congregation for not being married in the kirk but had opted to make a marriage declaration to the local sheriff
I once saw a TV programme where a lady showed an interviewer a large book, stating that it had been in her family for generations and had originally belonged to her ancestor,, a parish vicar, who had kept the bmd records. This shows that there were some clergy who kept the parish record register, claiming it as their own personal possession.
Some C of E clergy were extremely sloppy when it came to keeping decent records. I have one parish in Yorkshire were the vicar kept minimum records such as "WS a son". By far the best kept records were written by the Ev. Lutheran clergy, who recorded parents, occupations and villages of the in-laws as well as the bride and groom plus names, occupations and villages of witnesses. Baptisms showed name of baby, names of parents and names of grandparents and witnesses, plus occupations where necessary.