Just because I was curious, I decided to see how quickly I could find my marriage record Online. I got married a little over 6 years ago, in late 2003, so the Internet was already is full use and records had been being kept electronically for a while.

I did a quick Google search for my local county courthouse website. The clerk of courts for Okalossa County, Florida was pretty easy to find. I then went to public records search and typed in my last name, selected the type of record I was looking for and also the date range.

Vioalla! Piece of cake! I found a link to a PDF file that contained the actual marriage certificate/ marriage license  that my wife and I signed. I know that we did get an actual, physical copy of it a little while after we got married, but I honestly don’t know where I filed it!

O well, that’s no big deal. I printed out and saved the PDF version just to have my own personal electronic and hard copy on hand. Not that I really need it for anything that I know of right now, but I just thought I’d share how quick and easy it was to find my marriage license on the Internet.

Even if you were married before records were kept electronically, there is still a very good chance that you can find an electronic version Online. Just because I was curious, I did some searching for other people. I saw different scanned copies of older marriage certificates from the 80’s & 70’s.

Many states started backing up old data by scanning the paper files in the early 2000’s. Not just marriage licenses, but birth certificates, death certificates, and more were scanned, backed-up and are now kept electronically. Each state and county is different, so it is up to you to do the searching.

A search can be as simple as a review of your local county courthouses records. Or you may want to use a little help from a website that accesses these types of public databases. Whatever you choose to do, there is a good chance that you can find the specific record that you are searching for pretty fast.