Reference Centre, Genealogy 101

Answers to Genealogy FAQs - Wales BMD Certificates

All civil registration certificates for birth, marriage and death events registered in Wales and England as of 1 July, 1837 and after can be obtained from the General Register Office at Kew, Surrey, England.

You can order birth and death certificates online at:

the General Register Office

The online order system for birth and death certificates is very easy to use. First, you will have to register for an account. This is free. Then, search for an entry. When you find the correct one in the search results, click on the radio button beside the entry and a new line will appear, with blue boxes, that says "Order this entry as a: Certificate   PDF   Digital Image". Clicking on any one of the blue boxes will produce a page for that type of order. A Certificate or PDF file can be ordered from the same order page. Certificates are £11.00 and PDF format certificates are £7.00 each. The digital image of the certificate is £2.50 each and is available for viewing once payment is complete. A link to the image is provided on the order confirmation screen. The image will be available to view via "My Orders" page for 3 months from the date of your order. While the digital image cannot be used for official purposes it is the exact same image that would be included on a formal certificate or a PDF form of certificate. Accordingly, it is very well suited to family history research. Below, is an example of a digital certificate for the death of Ann Gregory:

The GRO website does not yet list marriages. Marriage registrations can be searched for on the FreeBMD website, which will also provide all of the registration details that are needed to order a certificate from the GRO - registration district, page and volume numbers, year and quarter of the year in which the event was registered.

All birth, marriage and death certificates can be ordered by telephone from the General Register Office. To contact the General Register Office, call +44 (0) 300 123 1837, Monday to Friday 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, or Saturday 9:00 am -1:00 pm.

For general enquiries for help ordering a certificate or for enquiries related to an order you can email the GRO at:

General Enquiries certificate.services@gro.gov.uk

If you wish to write, enclosing payment for a certificate, please write to:

Contact Centre,
GRO,
PO Box 2,
Southport,
Merseyside
United Kingdom
PR8 2JD

For postal applications payment can be made either by credit/debit card, cheque, postal order or international bankers draft in sterling payable to "HM Passport Office". If you wish to use the priority service the cost is an additional £35.00 and your envelope has to be clearly marked as "priority".

If you request any type of certificate by postal application that does not have the full GRO references (district, page and volume numbers) and the GRO is unable to produce a certificate, on the basis of the information you did provide, then £3.50 will be retained from the certificate refund to cover costs incurred. In these instances, any additional administration fees paid with the application are also non-refundable.

A certificate may also be requested from some local registrar's offices.  Costs of certificates are now £11.00 or more and are usually slightly more expensive than those purchased from the national office at Kew. Check with the local registrar's office for up-to-date pricing on certificates before you order.  This link will take you to the Gov.uk website where you can search for a local register office.  Birth and death certificates ordered from a local registrar's office generally pose no problems other than having to know the approximate date of the event.  Some offices will conduct a more extensive search for higher fees but many of the larger offices have been known to refuse extensive search requests.

Obtaining a marriage certificate through a local register office is quite different.  Due to the manner in which the marriages were recorded, you have to know the name of the church where the marriage took place as well as the approximate date of the marriage.

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