Can the name on a marriage certificate be changed?

What does a marriage certificate record?#

The marriage, as it happened on the day. The certificate is a certified copy of the entry in the marriage register, and that entry is made from the paperwork the two of you sign straight after the ceremony. So it shows each of you under the name you had then, with the date and the place. HM Passport Office's guidance to its staff sums it up: the certificate "is evidence of the event and who took part in it".

In England and Wales the paperwork changed on 4 May 2021. Until then, couples signed a register book, kept at each register office and at the churches, chapels and other religious buildings registered for marriage. Now you sign a marriage schedule, or a marriage document at a church wedding after banns or by licence, and a registrar enters it in a single electronic marriage register. The same change put both parents on the certificate for the first time, where only fathers' names had been recorded before. GOV.UK says each of you can include up to four parents on the schedule, for example mothers, fathers or step-parents.

Can I change the name on it after the wedding?#

No. GOV.UK's guidance on correcting a marriage or civil partnership registration says you cannot apply for a correction to show new information when circumstances change after the ceremony, and the General Register Office's own notes say the same of the register. Taking your spouse's surname, making a deed poll a year later, going back to your own name after a divorce: none of these is ever written onto the certificate.

None of them needs to be, because that is how the certificate works as evidence. It links the surname you had before the wedding to your spouse's in one official record, and any later change is proved by its own document, shown alongside it. GOV.UK's divorce guidance is a good example: the application asks for the marriage certificate and, if you have changed your name since you married, proof of the change, such as a deed poll.

What if there is a mistake on it?#

That can be put right, as long as the mistake was made at the time. First find out where it is, by asking the register office for the district where you married, even if the ceremony was in a church or another venue. If the register is right and the error crept in when the certificate was copied from it, you simply order a new certificate. If the register itself is wrong, you apply through that register office, and the General Register Office decides.

• Who can apply: either of you, but both must know about it. The form has a declaration for both of you to sign, and a sole applicant gives a reason. If neither of you is alive, the entry cannot be corrected.
• Evidence: official documents showing the correct detail, valid or dated within the three months before the wedding, such as a passport, a photocard driving licence, a bank statement or a letter from a government department. Nothing dated after the wedding counts. Send photocopies certified as true copies, not originals or photographs; a register office should be able to certify them if you apply and pay in person.
• Fee: £99, paid when you apply. It pays for the application to be considered, so it is not refunded if the correction is refused.
• Time: the General Register Office aims to review an application within 25 working days, and each further exchange can take as long again.

The original entry is never erased. A note in the margin records the correct detail and the date of the correction, and every certificate issued afterwards includes it.

The easiest correction is the one you never need. Before the schedule or document is signed, the registrar or minister may ask you questions about what it says, and that is the moment to check every name letter by letter.

Can I change my name on the marriage certificate but nowhere else?#

Not in the UK. The certificate records who married, not what either of you will be called afterwards, and HM Passport Office's guidance says there is no legal basis in the UK for a name to change because of a marriage or civil partnership. Each record changes only when you send the certificate to the organisation that holds it: GOV.UK's instruction is to send a copy to record-holders, and National Records of Scotland says most organisations accept it as evidence if you start using a new surname.

So the choice is made record by record, and it has consequences. Taking your spouse's surname at the bank but keeping your own on your passport leaves records that disagree, and the passport office can issue a passport in only one of the names, with an observation that you are also known by the other. My name is different on my documents explains how to bring records back into line. The certificate also has limits: it cannot evidence a combined surname run together as one word, or your old surname kept as a middle name, and do I need a deed poll after getting married? sets out when a deed poll comes in.

Is a civil partnership certificate different?#

No, the same rules apply. GOV.UK's correction guidance covers marriage and civil partnership registrations together, with the same fee and the same evidence, and HM Passport Office treats a civil partnership certificate like a marriage certificate. If you converted a civil partnership into a marriage, the General Register Office's notes send you to the register office where the conversion took place.

What about Scotland and Northern Ireland?#

National Records of Scotland says an entry in its registers usually remains unchanged once it is made. It can sometimes correct information that was wrong at the time of registration, recording the amendment in its Register of Corrections, but not circumstances that changed afterwards; ask through its contact page. Its change of name service, which updates a Scottish birth or adoption certificate, cannot be used for a change on marriage or civil partnership, and NRS adds that you do not need to change your surname then at all.

For a marriage or civil partnership registered in Northern Ireland, the General Register Office for Northern Ireland holds the records and issues the certificates, so ask it about a correction.