Guide to BMD Registers

What is RG34?

General Register Office: Overseas Foreign Marriage Returns. This series contains marriage certificates issued by foreign registration authorities and churches, copies of entries in the registers kept by British embassies, incumbents of English churches and chaplains, notification of marriages of servicemen during service abroad, and documents deposited for safekeeping. These cover the period 1861 to 1921.

Scope and content

More than 38,000 individuals are recorded in the overseas marriages records which include British subjects marrying abroad. These newly added records were previously only viewable on microfilm at The National Archives as the RG 34 series.
Many of the marriage certificates were issued by the authorities in the country concerned in the local language. These have been translated to provide a searchable database and links to a digital image of the original record.
Included in this series you can find:

• Marriage registers of British churches abroad.
• There is also a collection of marriages between British soldiers in France, Flanders and Holland during and after the First World War, including many who had been prisoners of war.

The sources of these records covering British Citizens are worldwide and include marriage certificates issued by foreign registration authorities and churches, copies of entries in the registers kept by British embassies, incumbents of English churches and chaplains, notification of marriages of servicemen during service abroad, and documents deposited for safekeeping.