Tracing family birth, marriage, death certificates

[zico]

Does anyone know the best way to do this? Google search throws up a lot of sites, but most charge for the service. I have exact names for my grandparents, but not sure about the year of their marriage.

I tried the government's HM Passport Office (General Register Office) but despite it saying you can order Births, Marriages or Death certificates, it only gives an option for Births or Deaths (and there's a big gap for Death certificates from 1957 to 1984.

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/cert ... /login.asp

[Gaggsy]

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl
How about this site? Beware - end of search must be before 1998 but should be OK in your case.

[AF62]

The General Register Office (https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/) is the correct place to order certificates - but it really helps if you have the GRO index reference number.

The GRO does have a search function for those reference numbers but it is pretty limited. FreeBMD as mentioned by Gaggsy is pretty good, but if you need to do more research (it sounds like you won't need to) then sites such as Ancestry and Find My Past are quite useful. Although they both those sites have free trial periods, many local libraries have free access to them.

Ordering the certificates through the GRO (once you have the index reference number) is straightforward and delivery is quite prompt.

[XFool]

I concur.

Search FreeBMD --> Get GRO Index --> Order from GRO using GRO Index

is the usual route.