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Why you should order three to five copies of your marriage certificate: some offices keep them
After the wedding, and after the license has gone back to the county, there is one more step most people don't know about: ordering a certified copy of your marriage certificate.
This is the piece of paper every later errand will ask for.
The one in your hand isn't proof
First, a common misunderstanding.
After the ceremony, your officiant sends the marriage license back to the county to be recorded. Once it goes back, it stays in the county's files. It does not come back to you.
So on the day your wedding ends, you are holding nothing you can actually use. What you need is the certified copy you request afterwards, once the recording is complete.
It has to be a certified copy. A photocopy will not do
A certified copy is issued by the county and carries a raised seal or watermark.
A copy you make yourself will be refused, and so will a scan. The Social Security Administration, the DMV, the passport agency and USCIS all accept only the one with the seal.
This isn't a strict clerk. It is how the system is designed. Bringing a photocopy will not get you waved through.
Why three to five
Because some offices keep the copy and don't give it back.
You hand it over expecting it back, and instead it goes into their file. By the time the next errand needs one, you have none left — and you are back to the county, waiting out the processing time again.
A quick count of where you will need one:
- Social Security name change
- DMV, for a new driver's license
- Passport name change
- Filing for a spousal green card
- The green card interview
- Removing conditions on a conditional green card (I-751)
- Banks, insurers, and your employer's HR records
If you are going through the green card process you will burn through them faster, because the same document is asked for at filing, at the interview, and again when you remove conditions.
Ordering extras costs very little at the margin — usually a few dollars to a dozen or so each, all in the same request, with no second trip. Set against having to reorder one at a time and wait out the processing again, this is the cheapest decision in the whole process.
How to order
Order from the county that issued the license, not the county you live in now.
Most counties will take a request online, by mail, or in person. One thing to watch: some will not process a request until the officiant has returned the license and the marriage has been recorded. So going in the day after the wedding may find no record of you yet. Confirm the recording is complete first.
Keep them, but not all in one place
A practical suggestion once you have them: don't store them all together.
Keep one in your household file, one with your passport and green card, and treat the rest as the ones you hand over. That way a copy being kept by an office, or a box going missing in a move, doesn't take all of them at once.
Also scan one. A scan can't do any official errand, but it lets you check the date, the certificate number and the spelling of the names — details you will be asked to match on forms.
If you chose a Confidential license
Some states, California among them, offer two kinds of marriage license. If you chose Confidential, copies can be requested only by the two of you, and the record is not public.
That makes no difference in daily life, but it adds a step when you need the certificate for immigration paperwork. It is why couples planning a spousal green card are usually advised to choose Public from the start.
There is more to do before and after the wedding than this one errand. The full 130-item list is in My Wedding Plan, with the timing and the consequence of getting each one wrong.