Family Historian User Group

Why is it I can add multiple possible dates for an individual’s birth, but only one for a marriage, is it a GEDCOM restriction?  My uncle gave me a date for the marriage of my grandparents, but it does not agree with the BMD indexes.  I would like to put both dates in until I get a copy of the certificate at some future point and I don’t want to put in a second marriage event.

Another case for this is for my cousin who had a registry office wedding on one date and some days later had a Hindu wedding ceremony.  Both dates are her wedding day.


ID:4608

When you add multiple birth dates you add multiple birth events. You can do the same with marriages, but as you don't want to do this I would simply add a note to the source citation.

For the Hindu wedding I would simply add either a second marriage event (she will still only have one Family as Spouse) or create a custom event for the 'Blessing/Hindu' Ceremony if you prefer.

I made custom events for Marriage Registration / Birth Registration / Death Registration to hold index entries. That way I can have the information for the registrations intact but change the marriage event as better data becomes available.

My husband's family comes from Massachusetts. In some eras, it is not uncommon to have three separate registrations for the same marriage -- one in the town vital records of the groom's hometown, one for the bride's hometown, and one in the place the marriage actually happened (if it didn't take place in one of the two hometowns).

For the case you described, I would put the info from the BMD indexes in my custom event, and the family date in the marriage event. One could also make a local note attached to each entry about the disagreement.

Thanks both for your replies.  My memory is not what it used to be, I know I have to add another birth event on an Individual to get a second birth date, but for some reason didn't think I should add a second marriage event to a family.  It was Family as Spouse I meant I didn't want twice, nothing at all wrong with multiple marriage events for the same family as spouse, at least until I can find the real date.

Tombaston said:
Another case for this is for my cousin who had a registry office wedding on one date and some days later had a Hindu wedding ceremony.  Both dates are her wedding day.

For this scenario, to avoid the multiple 'family as spouse' records, what about specifying the two dates as endpoints of a range / period, with a note explaining that the start date is the registry office wedding and the end date is the Hindu one? It's a kludge, to be sure, but that way both dates would be recorded on the same event.