Registration of marriage

The process of registering a marriage in Ireland is the same whether you are marrying in a registry office, or having a religious or secular ceremony. Read about the different types of marriage ceremonies in Ireland.

Before you get married, you and the person you want to marry must give notification of your intention to marry to the Registrar at your local Civil Registration Service. You must do this in person, at least 3 months before the date of your marriage. Read more about notification requirements for marriage.

If you are already in a civil partnership and wish to marry, you should contact the Registrar who will guide you through the process. The notification can be given to any Registrar. Find your local Civil Registration Service.

When you give notification of your intention to marry, and if there is no impediment (barrier) to your marriage, the Registrar will issue you with a Marriage Registration Form (MRF) which gives you permission to marry. You need an MRF in order to get married in Ireland. The MRF is also needed to register your marriage, so it is an important document.

You should give the MRF to the person who will be solemnising your marriage before the marriage ceremony. Immediately after the marriage ceremony the MRF should be signed by you and your spouse, the two witnesses and the person solemnising the marriage.

If you get married by civil ceremony, the Registrar who solemnised the marriage will register the marriage with the information on the MRF as soon as possible after the ceremony.

If you get married by religious or secular ceremony, you should give the MRF to a Registrar at a Civil Registration Service within 1 month for the marriage to be registered. It does not have to be returned to the same Registrar who gave it to you.

You cannot get your marriage certificate until your marriage is registered.

Marriages of Irish citizens abroad are normally registered in the country where they happen. The General Register Office (central civil repository for records relating to births, deaths and marriages in Ireland) has no role in the registration of marriages of Irish citizen(s) that take place abroad, or in advising on such marriages. Marriages that take place outside the State are not registered in Ireland.

Your foreign marriage certificate will usually be accepted for official purposes in Ireland where you need to show evidence that you are married. If the certificate is in a foreign language, you must provide an official translation or a translation from a recognised translation agency.

There is no fee charged for the registration of a marriage, or for the correction of errors on a marriage certificate. Fees are charged for copies of certificates.

The fees charged for a certificate are as follows:

• €20 for a full standard certificate
• €5 for an uncertified copy of an entry in the Register
• €10 to have a certificate authenticated (only available from the General Register Office)
• €0 for a Multilingual Standard Form (MSF)

A Multilingual Standard Form (MSF) can be requested for birth, death, marriage and civil partnership certificates. A MSF is a translation of the certificate that you can present to authorities in other EU member states. You must choose which EU language you want for the MSF, and it must be requested at the same time as when you apply for the certificate.

To get a copy of a marriage certificate, you will need to give the date (or approximate date if not known) and place of the marriage, and the full names of the couple before they married.

If you got married in Ireland (whether by civil, secular or religious ceremony) you can order a copy of your marriage certificate online (full standard certificates only), by post using an application form (pdf), by phone or in person at any Civil Registration Service.

You must pay €2 for postage of online orders in Ireland, and €3 per order outside of Ireland. Delivery time depends on how long it takes to locate the certificate and where it is being posted to. You will get a full refund if the record cannot be found.

The General Register Office has a family research facility known as the GRO Research Room at Werburgh Street, Dublin 2, where you can search the indexes to the registers and buy photocopies of records. If you wish to order certified copies of entries, you can do so from the General Register Office in Roscommon (see contact details below).

The Research Room currently has a walk-in service on Tuesdays only, from 10am - 12.30pm, and from 2pm – 4.30pm. An email service is available 5 days a week at GROResearchRoom@welfare.ie. Note: There is no walk-in service available at the Research Rooms from the 25 June 2024 due to urgent repair works on the building. The walk in service will re-open on Tuesday, 27 August 2024. The Research Rooms continues to offer a full email service.

You can search the indexes to the registers including:

• Births registered on the island of Ireland between 1 January 1864 and 31 December 1921 inclusive, and in the Republic of Ireland from 1922 onwards
• Deaths registered on the island of Ireland between 1 January 1864 and 31 December 1921 inclusive and in the Republic of Ireland from 1922 onwards
• Marriages registered on the island of Ireland between 1 April 1845 and 31 December 1921 inclusive and in the Republic of Ireland from 1922 onwards
• Domestic adoptions registered in Ireland from 10 July 1953 onwards

You can also find historic church and civil records of births, marriages and deaths on irishgenealogy.ie.

• Births 1864-1923
• Marriages 1845*-1948
• Deaths 1871-1973

*Civil registration of marriages in the Roman Catholic church only began in 1864.