Following last week’s launch of our fantastic new marriage records search, MarriageFinder^TM, we’ve found some interesting names in our records. They just go to show that when taking a partner ‘for better or worse’, an embarrassing married name doesn’t put everyone off…

Here is a selection of the names we found in the records:

• Holly Oakes
• Eileen Dover
• Hazel Nut
• Queenie King
• Mona Lott
• Jean Pool
• Joy Rider
• Lily Pond
• Anita Bath
• Candy Barr
• Kerry Oakey

Keeping up with the Mary Christmases

It seems that a large number of Marys have continued the Christmas theme with their name and married someone with the festive surname, Christmas. There are over 50 Mary Christmases in our marriage records - the earliest recorded Mary Christmas married in 1837 in Alton, Hampshire, losing the maiden name of Cannon.

Where for art thou?

We’ve discovered a pair of real star-crossed lovers in the marriage records: in 1971, a Romeo married a Juliet in Lambeth, London. We also found the marriage records of Oscar Fingal Wilde and Constance Lloyd in Kensington, London in 1884, Jude Law and Sadie Frost in Westminster, London in 1997 and Kate Winslet and Jim Threapleton, in Reading, Berkshire in 1998.

With this record I thee wed

Our research found that the most popular county to get married in was Lancashire, with 11.66 million records listed between 1837 and 2005. London followed closely behind with 11.62 million.

The five most popular towns to be married in were:

1. Birmingham, Warwickshire: 1,656,516 records
2. Manchester, Lancashire: 1,127,584 records
3. Sheffield, Yorkshire: 988,541 records
4. Leeds, Yorkshire: 980,207 records
5. Bristol, Somerset: 899,885 records

Our marketing manager, Debra Chatfield (pictured), said:

“As the first company to publish birth, marriage and death records online, findmypast.co.uk has always been committed to making family history research more accessible. This brand new way of searching the marriage records is a major breakthrough in family history enabling people to find their ancestors’ marriages more quickly and easily than ever before by using our revolutionary new tool MarriageFinder^TM. Thanks to initiatives like this, family history is more popular than ever and we hope that we can help even more people to start uncovering their family’s past.”

Debra Chatfield, findmypast.co.uk's marketing manager

When you search our marriage records, MarriageFinder^TM will match up your ancestors’ records, providing you in many cases with one definite marriage match, or a list of possible matches.

The launch of these records represents the latest development in our project to fully name index our birth, marriage and death records. We launched the birth records in July 2010 and the death records will follow in early 2011.

Search our marriage records now to find your ancestors’ marriages.

Findmypast’s marketing manager Debra Chatfield will be giving a talk about the 1911 census at the Devon Family History Society Conference on Saturday 2 October.

Tickets are on sale now, but hurry - your booking form needs to arrive with the Devon FHS by post by Friday 24 September.

Find out more about the conference and complete a booking form here: http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/agm.htm

Debra Chatfield

If you’ve been tuning into programmes like Victorian Farm or Secrets of World War II on the Yesterday channel recently, you might have caught findmypast.co.uk’s new TV sponsorship ads. This is our very first foray into the world of TV advertising, and as marketing manager for findmypast.co.uk, I was lucky enough to be there at the filming.

This was my first experience of working on a TV campaign and I was surprised by just how many people were involved in bringing our ads to life. As well as the five actors who you see on screen, there were lighting crew, cameraman, runners, sound man, make-up artist, wardrobe mistress, producer, production manager and assistants, props team, assistant director, scriptwriter and creative team - around 30 people in total - who all had to squash into a tiny nursery to film the “But I can’t be your great-grandmother” ad.

Of course there was our brilliant director Alan Grint, of Lark Rise to Candleford, Catherine Cookson mini series and Midsomer Murders fame. He ensured that we had no dramas of our own, with filming running perfectly to schedule (which apparently never happens) and all taking place on one day at Cragside House, a stunning National Trust property in Rothbury. A day later we found out that gunman Raoul Moat had been on the loose in the village all the time we were filming! Fortunately for us the only problems we encountered were the house alarm going off whenever a smoke machine was used to create the atmospheric haze in the ad set in the kitchen and the occasional RAF jet flying low overhead between takes.

Cragside House was the home of Lord Armstrong, a Victorian inventor, and it is filled with all sorts of his gadgets, such as a forerunner of the soda stream, with a rather dauntingly oversized gas cylinder attached. This was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity, so our production team had to disguise some of the electric light fittings to make them look like gaslight and more in keeping with the period. The staff at Cragside House were incredibly patient with us and the whole crew really worked well together - we all had a fantastic day.

I hope you like the results - watch our four bumper ads now. Our film company did some behind the scenes filming of the day - watch the video and let us know what you think!