General Chat

When completing a marriage schedule, the registrar's office insist that paperwork must be completed carefully and checked for spelling errors.

Daughter's wedding is this Saturday at a venue, more than 30 miles from home, and of course this is where the marriage will be registered.

She carefully filled in the forms before sending them off.
Yesterday her intended made the journey ( his only day off before Saturday) to collect the prepared marriage schedule.

Our middle daughter is the bridesmaid/witness.
Her name has been mis-spelled
The Registrar checked the paperwork that daughter had provided.
It reads: Katharine
The girl at the office said that she "assumed" that this was a spelling error and changed it to the more conventional form of: Katherine.

As a legal document, it has to be altered and means daughter has to make another round trip of more that 70 miles first thing on Friday morning.
It's an appointment system. Time 10am.
( only the bride or groom can collect)

I won't go into too much detail but, the appt time is really, really.. inconvenient and daughter refuses to call them again and ask for a later slot!


She/we will now be making the same 70 mile round trip 3 times over this Friday.
Grrr

My lot's birth and marriage certs are full of spelling errors - my father even spelt his wife's name incorrectly on one of the birth certs. It does not matter all that much and certainly not the spelling of a witness' name.

Oddly enough they always got the death certs spelled properly - whether that was 'cos of the inheritance at stake I can only speculate.

I was certain that a spelling error, consisting of one letter in a witnesses name wouldn't make a difference but the Registrar's Office in Ayr insist that it has to be amended.
The signature has to match the name

It can be done retrospectively but again can only be collected by either party in the marriage.... which isn't that simple when they are only open Mon-Fri
Neither of them have any anuual leave left !

The R.O. is wrong. Minor errors of spelling do not invalidate Birth and marriage certs UNLESS they were deliberate and designed to mislead. If you had let the correction to Katharine go you would have been ok now the jobsworth has you at his mercy. You can always fork out for a special licence if they have such things in Scotland.

Morals: stick to standard spellings of names., let sleeping dogs lie.