The widest marriage certificate I've seen

My own marriage certificate issued by a church in 1968 is wider than an A4 sheet.
Ditto my parents marriage certificate issued by a church in 1942.
Ditto my maternal uncle's cert issued by a different denomination in 1964.
I have another one in my collection issued in 1927.

The above examples are what I call originals (although they are certified copies) because they have the actual signatures in them and do not have given at the general register office followed by an application number at top right..

 

The widest one I have seen, or I have, is a QLD marriage register entry for my great grandparents, I only have a scan, but at 100% it's almost as wide as an A3 sheet (two A4s), although there is a lot of space for the margins!

And that's only the top half of the book...

 

I have a wide marriage certificate of my grandparents' church wedding in 1912 (complete with penny stamp). It's what got me started in tracing my family history.

 

Australia switched to the A4 certificates in the late 1930s, early 1940s - I just had a dig around in my catalogue of certificates and that's when they seem to swop from double-page spread and handwritten to single page and typed.

 

I hadn't realised the picture of the church was part of the certificate because you said in the newsletter,: The parish church of St Luke, Miles Platting, Lancashire (shown in the picture accompanying the certificate)
It also looks separate from the certificate.
None of the certificates I listed in post #1 have a church attached and I had never seen one like it until the newsletter.

 

I don't know exactly when either, but yesterday I was looking at a marriage certificate I obtained from the GRO in 1992, and that was in A4 format.

 

I have two different size death certificates for my parents. The earlier one (2005) is 42x21 cm and the later (2007) is A4 - but double-sided; both from the same office. There are "duplicate" boxes for some entries - one for the "Welsh" version and one for the "English" version.

 

Found this on the net:
The UK adopted A4 paper in 1959. In 1975, the United Nations (which was established after the end of the second world war) adopted the paper format as an ISO standard. Within two years after its adoption by the UN, A4 printer paper was being used in more than 88 countries across the world.

Perhaps we should be looking at it from a different angle. The church certificates in post #1 are all originals, meaning they were provided to the bride and groom after the ceremony.
In my collection I have certificates obtained from the GRO for marriages that took place in church in 1908 and in 1916. The GRO issued copies on 7 May 2013 and they are on A4 paper. As A4 paper has not been invented at the time of the marriages the originals would have been on the wider paper which I suspect is the old foolscap size.

I conclude that the GRO has issued certificates on A4 paper since it came into general use.

 

I have the death certificate of a great-aunt who died in December 1978, which is in A4 format.

 

Most GRO issued certificates incorporate a photocopy of the relevant entry from the quarterly returns, so there is also the question of when they were able to reduce a wide format entry to fit on A4 paper.

 

Wasn't it in 1969 when the information required for birth and death registrations changed, with birth and death certificates then also changing to an A4 portrait format?

Marriage registers and certificates, however, continued to use the wide landscape format.